Nick Cohen on The Knives (Observer): 'The best novel about modern politics I have read in years'.

The shrewdest observation I've ever heard said about reviews comes, if I remember right, from Roman Polanski, to the effect that if you decide to believe whatever good write-ups you're lucky enough to get then you have to believe the non-good ones, too, since there's no substantive difference that anyone can point to.

And fair play to that, but obviously one's attention tends in certain directions and not others. Nick Cohen, political writer for the Observer and the Spectator and Standpoint, author of (inter alia) What's Left? and You Can't Read The Book, reviewed The Knives for last Sunday's Observer, and I couldn't have wished for more in appreciation of the novel - in particular his assertion that it is 'the best novel about modern politics I have read in years.'