Cirrus@Austlit

'Just as fiction’s George Smiley made sense of the world - and even made his baffling way about a world at war through knowing the works of minor German poets - our own very real Michael Sharkey (who has an equally resonant and unlikely name) has found that his passion for a certain strain of minor poets also intersects with history, war, intrigue, political resistance and troubling nationalism.'  (Introduction)