A Small Revolution in Germany Paperback – 4 March 2021

Like a darker and more complex version of ‘The Rotters club’, although characters and plot are more schematic. Always enjoy the Sheffield details as spent a lot of time there in my youth.

Difficult to know what to make of this. It's neither the level of his finest (Northern Clemency) nor his most pompous (Emperor Waltz). It's readable enough and is about a disparate gang of sixth formers at the factional left of politics and how those views either change or don't as they progress through life. Spike, the central character, is in the don't change bracket, witnessed by his midlife tendency to revolt against the arrival of Foxtons in his neighbourhood by throwing a brick through their window. The segment when the teenagers visit East German before the fall of the wall and discover the reality of socialism is probably the most interesting part.

Glory be, yes! Here is that rare thing, an intelligently written novel of ideas - not so much about extreme politics and the compromises of middle-age, though using that as the framework - but about the way we relate to people (or not) when young, and how (or not) that changes as we become older, if not wiser.Moving easily from Sheffield to East Berlin, Oxford to Saxony, Hensher takes us and his compact cast of characters through experiences of life, love and political involvement over nearly forty years, ending bang up to date in our own, British political present. For me, the book's teasing hints of 'roman a clef' (one of the characters has a fair amount in common with our current Prime Minister) and its plot (which creaks rather in the last section) are much less important than the multitude of brilliant - often witty - apercus on the journey.And in Spike, he has created a wryly "anonymous" narrator of the most dryly engaging kind. I was moved, amused and mentally stimulated by this excellent novel, and will explore more of Hensher's books.