The Hoplite Journals

Martin Anderson is best known as a poet, but the prose 'fascicles' of 'The Hoplite Journals' mark a new direction into an undefinable style. A whiff of Borges, a glimpse of Greene (as seen through the Argentine master's spectacles), the language ornate and often fusty, these prose pieces document an unnamed protagonist's engagement with the East, both the real contemporary Orient and the fabled East of desk-bound writers and daring turn-of-the-century travellers.The impressions build into a remarkable impressionistic meta-narrrative: here is a Manila of the mind, a Hong Kong out of memory, and many other places, unnamed, the odour of durian and yellowing books overpowering the senses.