Bedlam Burning

The acclaimed author of Bleeding London spins a yarn of academia, lunacy, and the blurry lines between them in this Whitbread Prize–finalist novel.

It all starts at Cambridge University, where Dr. John Bentley throws his book burning parties—"a little active, symbolic literary criticism"—in which guests are invited to state their grudges against their least favorite books, and then toss them into a fire. It is at one such party that the brilliant but sheepish Gregory Collins meets Mike Sm...