Patrick Wight is Emeritus Professor of Literature, History and Politics at Kings College, London. His books include The Village that Died for England, A Journey Through Ruins, and Tank- The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine.
A monumental sifting and arranging of local particulars, stitched against the savage farce of a great European novelist's elective exile... Patrick Wright has picked over the landfill of a very specific Estuary culture to devastating effect. A double 'biography' of the great but always tempestuous German writer Uwe Johnson and his ultimate home, the gritty and disreputable Isle of Sheppey. 'Biography' is in quotes because Wright is a saboteur of genres and his books encompass multiple worlds. I stand in awe of what he has accomplished here. A masterful modernist history, and Patrick Wright's most important book, bringing Europe to England by showing it has always been here, at a moment when too many want to believe something else. An extraordinary, haunting book... a phenomenal achievement. An astonishing chronicle of the great German author Uwe Johnson, who moved to Sheerness, Kent, in the 70s. To repeat: this tidal book, reaching into everything and then withdrawing to show what is left behind, is a triumph. A huge achievement: a comprehensive portrait of a place and a person, and the best book about Brexit that's yet been written. A model portrait of person and place, a kind of cultural and literary geography that never fails to fascinate.