Tale within a tale rings hollow

A Partisan’s Daughter. By Louis de Bernières, Harvill Secker, €17

Storytelling is the dominant motif in A Partisan’s Daughter, Louis de Bernières’s most self-consciously postmodern novel to date. Set in London during the late 1970s, it centres around two starkly different individuals: Chris, a diffident, middle-aged travelling salesman married to a ‘Great White Loaf ‘, and Roza, an enigmatic Yugoslavian immigrant in her 20s who, if she is to be believed, has already ...