Book review: Island hopping in South Korea
Michael Gibb’s journey by ferry to 30 islands is a self-deprecating examination of the more remote parts of this highly industrialized country
By Bradley Winterton / Contributing reporter
Great comic set-pieces in literature are usually carefully constructed and well-timed. So it is when Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time (a character clearly based on Shakespeare’s Malvolio in Twelfth Night) has a shaker of sugar emptied over his head, or when in Evelyn Waugh’s letters he misreads instructions and explodes 10 times the intended amount of dynamite, bringing down the roof of half a house, including that of a toilet on which someone is sitting (luckily without fatal results).