Moral ambiguity … is usually set within a precise social context: you know where you are physically and historically, however much the characters' ethical bearings may fluctuate. With Nelly's Version the ambiguity is total. Nelly herself does not know who she is, where she is, or why, and nor do we. She signs a hotel register with an apparently false name, discovers with surprise that her suitcase is stuffed with banknotes, and makes forays into the strange town which turns out to have unidentifiably familiar undertones. Eva Figes has long been involved with developing the relevance and potential of contemporary fiction, just as I have long been described by my closest friends as one of nature's philistines, so my appreciation of her work (which early on was extremely enthusiastic) has tended to deflate as she advances and I get more entrenched.

What I feel about her and several other...