Other People's Countries

McGuinness is a marvellous writer… On every page there are breathtakingly gorgeous images, similes, metaphors. – John Banville * Observer *
McGuinness has written the great book on Belgium and modern memory, or even Belgium and modern being. He takes his place among those singers and painters of the haunted, the melancholy, the diminished, the caricatural, the humdrum. – Michael Hofmann * Guardian *
Lyrical and evocative… This is a very Proustian memoir, whose effect will be to drive the reader into contemplation of their own half-forgotten childhood home. – Josh Glancy * Sunday Times *
A rich analysis of home and homelessness. – James Wood * London Review of Books *
This book had a powerful effect on me… Sometimes hilarious, sometimes freighted with tragedy. – Gillian Tindall * Literary Review *
For Patrick McGuinness memories are electrical storms of the mind. – James Carson * Skinny *
[McGuinness] is the best advocate for Belgium since Poirot and Tintin… Fascinating, charming, poignant. – Sean O’Brien * Independent *
Beautifully paced… Rich and unforced. * Sunday Telegraph *
An unusual and striking foray into the past… Powerful universal observations. – Rosie Hopegood * The Skinny *
McGuinness’s prose trembles on the edge of poetry, occasionally indeed tipping gently over into it… Spellbinding… Beautifully written. – Wynn Wheldon * Spectator *

Born in Tunisia, Patrick McGuinness is the author of The Last Hundred Days, which was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award and won the 2012 Wales Book of the Year Award and the 2012 Writers’ Guild Prize for Fiction. His other books include two collections of poems, The Canals of Mars (2004), and Jilted City (2010). He is a Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where he lectures in French.

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