Victory

Afternoon of a Faun is a brilliantly imagined, devastatingly insightful and powerfully rendered novel of sexual exploitation and betrayal. Like all of James Lasdun’s work, it is meticulously written and intelligent, both a novel of ideas and a cautionary tale for the #MeToo era. Its ending is bitterly ironic, or perhaps just darkly funny, depending upon one’s perspective – and Afternoon of a Faun is about the very drama of "perspective".

Joyce Carol Oates

In an era of sexual reckonings and "defunct male prerogatives", any decades-old fling is a ticking time bomb an ambivalent ex can choose to detonate at whim. Yet who’s to say what actually happened? Afternoon of a Faun is an exquisitely rendered tale of moral arithmetic, erotic murkiness, and men’s fascination with other men’s scorecards. It’s also Lasdun at his most pleasurably diabolical.

Laura Kipnis

From book to book, James Lasdun gets more and more interesting.

Bookmunch, 50 Books We're Looking Forward to in 2019

[James Lasdun’s] electric new book… is absorbing… [it] constantly pulls the rug from under your feet.

Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

Darkly humorous and compelling portraits of men wrestling with guilt and desire… [Afternoon of a Faun] feels very much a novel for our times.

Alex Preston, Guardian

The novellas [in Victory] are united by Lasdun’s signature virtues: a forensic attention to psychological detail, a mastery of dialogue and an all-round fluency that gives his prose a compelling swiftness. It is these virtues, more than the plots, that make Victory a triumph.

Frank Lawton, Literary Review

[Victory] comprises two mesmeric… impressive stories, containing beautiful descriptions and subtle twists.

Sunday Times, *Best Literary Novels of 2019*

Timely and irresistibly unpleasant… sure to provoke passionate discussion… [Afternoon of a Faun] lingers after you have closed the book with a vividness that testifies to the compact virtues of the novella.

Marcel Theroux, Guardian

Two superb novellas full of contemporary resonance… extraordinarily taut and compelling.

Leyla Sanai, Spectator

Feathered Glory confirms Lasdun as one of the great serio-comic writers of the age. The writing, alternately poetic and razor-sharp cynical, absorbs from start to finish.

Ian Thomson, Tablet, Novel of the Week

Fascinating about the warped thought processes that often underpin male duplicity.

William Skidelsky, Financial Times

[Victory makes] a convincing case for James Lasdun as one of the most incisive investigators of the human heart writing in English today… an instant masterpiece.

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer

Two stunningly well-written novellas… these stories are timeless in their humorous, melancholy view of the pitfalls of love.

Anne Chisholm, Tablet, *Summer reads of 2019*

The word "masterpiece" is not one to throw around lightly but I was enthralled by James Lasdun’s novella Afternoon of a Faun, from his collection Victory… it has the psychological precision of a Chekhov story.

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Evening Standard *Books of the Year*