[Stewart]

I'm sitting giggling sporadically, having come to the end of Gilbert Adair's The Death Of The Author and, knowing there was a twist at the end, I'm glad all the forward thinking I put in to work out what it may be didn't pay off. I've never really followed literary and critical movements, but those that do may notice that the book's title echoes, as I've found out, an essay by Barthes and the book's actual storyline subverts, as I've also found out, the biography of Paul de Man.

Wordplay, erudition, literary theory, satire, and more - and all in just over a hundred pages. I've always liked Adair's work and this one, from 1992, has to be his best.