ABSTRACT
Lawrence Norfolk has written only three novels in his career so far, but his first, Lempriere's Dictionary, was sufficiently startling in its assurance and originality to win him a place on the 1993 Granta list of Best Young British Novelists and all have marked him out as one of the most restlessly inventive writers of his generation. Some novelists want to pare the language and the events of their narratives down to the bare essentials. Norfolk stands at the opposite pole, as Lempriere's Dictionary clearly demonstrated. However, Norfolk creates an imaginary life for Lempriere, blending historical reality, classical allusions, fantasy and improbable conspiracy theories into a huge fictional extravaganza. In the Shape of a Boar is the most carefully structured of Norfolk's novels, meticulously interlinking the present, the imagined past, historical reality and the realm of mythology.
