Wilson, A(ndrew) N(orman)

(British, 1950– )

As well as an author of fiction, Wilson is a prolific biographer, journalist, media pundit, and controversialist. His most ambitious work of fiction is the five-volume sequence The Lampitt Papers (1988–97), which records the relationship of the narrator, Julian Ramsay, with a charismatic and well-connected family. At the heart of the sequence is the mystery surrounding the death of the belletrist James Petworth Lampitt, and the possible role in it of a meretricious writer called Raphael Hunter, whom Julian comes to regard as his dark angel. Dream Children (1998) is a work that takes on the subject of child abuse, daring to encourage the reader to sympathize with the abuser before exposing his moral poverty. Wilson is one of the few writers with the nerve to tackle this subject ironically.

Anthony Powell, Iris Murdoch, Barbara Pym  NC