D. M. Thomas began his writing career in the mid 1960s as a poet and translator of Russian verse into English. In 1981 he came to international attention with the publication of his Holocaust novel, The White Hotel. The sudden upsurge of interest in Thomas's work was the result of the power of a novel that was considered by some to be Holocaust fiction of the first rank but that engendered considerable controversy. The two novels that preceded it, The Flute-Player (1979) and Birthstone (1980), skillfully blend fantasy and realism and feature the wry, sometimes satiric humor that characterizes much of Thomas's creative output. In all of Thomas's work, there is a cluster of consistent interests: psychoanalysis, sexuality, the act and process of writing, and Russian culture. The Holocaust is a subject that he came to indirectly at first, but to which he has returned several times since The White Hotel...