A little more on Iain Pears, and chiefly on his forthcoming work which I first had word of a few months ago and which sounded exciting then but seems to be even more ripe with possibility now that I've read An Instance of the Fingerpost.
Arcadia is "a great multi-layered story of history and time. It is conceived and written for digital publication and will be first released in a purpose-built app for mobile devices built by Faber and Iain Pears in partnership.
The novel, whose characters' lives intersect in vivid time-slip stories, is the first of its kind. It mixes genres, periods and styles and can be read in different ways. Readers may approach each narrative as a traditional linear story; or they may follow the episodes of each tale on a cross-linear path. They can read, or leave out, sections as they choose. Different ways of reading create different relationships between the characters, and a different understanding of how stories can be told."
The app is due to be released in September this year with the hardback and ebook editions following in March 2014.
For those who prefer more conventional books, may I recommend Iain Pears' Stone's Fall
