Thomas, D(onald) M(ichael)

(British, 1935– )

Thomas shot to fame with his novel The White Hotel (1981). This tells the story of Lisa Erdman, including her sexual fantasies and analysis by Freud in Vienna, ending with her horrific death in the Ukraine during the Holocaust. The novel has a magic realist feel, and mixes together poetic and historical discourses. Among Thomas's later novels, Ararat (1983) concerns a search for poetic inspiration among the mountains of Russia, while Pictures at an Exhbition (1993) treats the Holocaust again, but in a more realist vein.

William Golding, Martin Amis  SV