Victory
JAMES LASDUN
(Jonathan Cape, 272 pp, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Fifteen years ago, the British-born writer James Lasdun was sent a series of email messages by a star pupil of his in a New York creative writing “workshop”. Nasreen, an attractive woman of Iranian descent, radiates sexual allure and flirtatiousness. Before long, her emails contain disturbing personal disclosures; they accuse Lasdun of literary plagiarism, as well as, dreadfully, rape. The New York Police Department refer the case to the “hate crimes” unit; the messages, a daily cyber-abuse, cause Lasdun to question his worth as a writer and son of a famous British architect (Denys Lasdun designed London’s National Theatre). Lasdun’s non-fiction account of his internet stalking, Give Me Everything You Have, frightens like an unlucky number.

His discomfiting new fiction, Victory, reprieves similar themes of obsessional love and sexual harassment. Middle-aged academics find themselves “blindsided” by younger women; talk is of one-night stands and shabbily deceiving husbands.