The Devil s Mode / Anthony Burgess

The first short story collection is a mixture of imaginary historical stories and fictional travelogues. In the most daring story, William Shakespeare, visiting Spain with his troupe, meets an aged, angry Cervantes. In another story, the French poet Stephane Mallarme, travelling through Dublin with his friend, the young Claude Debussy, exchanges views on art with 77-year-old Robert Browning. In “Hun”, a long, bloody romp through the crumbling Roman Empire, the story is about betrayal, murder and intrigue as the Roman general Aetius tries to use the feared Prince Attila as a “great whip” against Goths and Visigoths. Two stories deal with the English fascination with dark female flesh in the tropics. In “Murder to Music”, a detective story, Sherlock Holmes solves a case based on a clue that the reader recognises early on without being able to decipher it.