It is not every year that Malcolm Bradbury writes a novel. It is every decade that Malcolm Bradbury writes a novel. Already he has called 'Rates of Exchange' 'a novel for the early eighties,' just as '"Stepping Westward" was my novel for the early sixties.' Given such ambitions, it's no wonder that Bradbury's books are notoriously slow to get off the ground—and, in the present case, slower still to land.

'Rates of Exchange' begins with a cod history of Slaka, the imaginary capital of an imaginary East European state. This teasing sketch is written with such ravenous drollery that you can almost hear the author rubbing his hands and smacking his lips at the prospect of the feast to come. Page 13 sees the hero, the laconic linguist Petworth, warily circling Slaka Airport….

The opening wedge of prose would seem to be an elaborate dramatisation...