The Medusa Frequency Av Russell Hoban

<p><b>''Sparkles with classical allusions and a wisecracking humour ... it is pure joy'' </b><i><b>Daily Telegraph</b><br></i><br>It all begins the night a leaflet comes through the door of unsuccessful novelist Herman Orff, promising a magical cure for writer''s block. The strange treatment plunges him into a hallucinatory London dreamworld populated by figures mythical and real: a severed talking head, Vermeer''s girl with a pearl earring, his lost love Luise and, beneath it all, the Kraken awaiting. As Herman will discover, creating art is a tough business.<br><br>''One of his most accessibly entertaining books'' <i>The Times<br></i><br>''Short, smart and fizzy, the novel seeks out the roots of creativity with none of the solemnity that phrase implies'' <i>New Statesman<br></i></p>