The Undiscovered Country — Julian Mitchell

Cast in the form of an autobiography, The Undiscovered Country tells the story of the intimate relationship between the narrator, Julian, and his boyhood friend Charles Humphries, a brilliant but erratic young man who fascinates Julian with his strange dark looks and his superior sophistication. “Our lives were so close,” confesses Julian, “that they are, to me, almost inextricable.” And indeed, one of the puzzles the author poses is whether Charles is a creature of Julian's imagination or a part of his own self, his alter ego. A witty and unsettling novel that explores the ambivalent relationship between art and reality, fact and fiction, satire and sentimentality, The Undiscovered Country is a brilliantly inventive tour de force, deserving all its comparisons to the work of Nabokov, Huxley and Borges.