Circus of Dreams

In the fiction of the decade, the English language was cleansed of indolence, fog and banality; in their place came hyperactivity, attack, clarity, surging narrative. Readers could marvel at the twirling swordsmanship of Martin Amis, the forensic creepiness of Ian McEwan, the headlong storytelling verve of William Boyd, the supple luxuriance of Rose Tremain, the vivid ventriloquising of Peter Ackroyd, David Lodge's evocations of sex and rivalry on the academic circuit, the textured historicism of Graham Swift, Angela Carter's Venus-flytrap feminism, A. S. Byatt's skilful mash-up of scholarly romance and Victorian pastiche, the exquisite bijouterie of Bruce Chatwin, the suave elisions of fact and invention in Julian Barnes's belles lettres, the precocious mythologising of Jeanette Winterson, the gleeful cruelty of Iain Banks, Salman Rushdie's linguistic salmagundi, Ben Okri's dispatches from emergent nationhood, Caryl Phillips's powerful investigations of slavery and self-determination, Timothy Mo's comic topography of Hong-Kong-immigrant Soho ...