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Books

Patrick deWitt is a literary original but he needs to BE MORE FUNNY

DeWitt's dark fairy-tale Undermajordomo Minor is gripping and unsettling and reminds one of the Grimms, Kafka and Edward Gorey

3 October 2015

9:00 AM

3 October 2015

9:00 AM

Undermajordomo Minor Patrick deWitt

Granta, pp.336, £12.99, ISBN: 9781847088697

Patrick deWitt is a Canadian writer whose second novel, a picaresque and darkly comic western called The Sisters Brothers, was much praised and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011. For the follow-up, deWitt has produced a picaresque and darkly comic middle-European fairy tale called Undermajordomo Minor. Instead of brothers named Sisters, it features a lone anti-hero with a girl’s name: Lucy (Lucien) Minor.

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