When the Soviet Union collapsed on December 26, 1991, it looked like the start of a remarkable new era of peace and co-operation. But Russia emerged from the 1990s battered and humiliated. Goaded on by a triumphant West, a new Russia has emerged with a large arsenal of upgraded weapons, conventional and nuclear, determined to reassert its national interests in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine, as well as fighting a proxy war in the Middle East. Conradi...

John Fowles had gained great popularity as a contemporary novelist on both sides of the Atlantic. In this comprehensive study of his work, originally published in 1982, Peter Conradi relates his work to his life, his ideas and his place in contemporary English fiction at the time. Conradi sees him as both realist and experimental, and in detailed analyses of The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman illuminates Fowles's use of literary genres -...