SOURCE: “State of Seige,” in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 4, No. 149, May 3, 1991, p. 36.

In the following review of The Redundancy of Courage, Fletcher examines details of the novel's plot and assesses Mo's treatment of the theme of courage in the face of oppression.

Timothy Mo doesn’t suffer fools gladly. A writer of the highest professional standards who limbered up for the long distance of a novelist’s career by writing for Boxing News, he knows his own worth. Aside from his well-documented high advance in Britain for The Redundancy of Courage, he withdrew his novel from the US market when publishers there failed to offer enough noughts.

Likewise, the heavyweight title of his latest work would suggest: you don’t mess with a Timothy Mo novel. And it would be foolish to do so. For our literary pugilist has written an enthralling novel of third-world oppression and...