Case

The Case is John Fraser's latest fictional tour de force. It is a novel
about loss - loss of memory, of love, of money, of friends. The
protagonist searches throughout the book for a suitcase - maybe valuable in
itself, maybe because it represents resources and a destination. The Case
takes us on a trip through the American dream, of wealth, cowboys and
Hollywood movies, and out the other side, to police shootouts, mortal danger
and revolution, on a quest for the missing case.
'One of the most extraordinary publishing events of the past few years has
been the rapid, indeed insistent, appearance of the novels of John Fraser.
There are few parallels in literary history to this almost simultaneous and
largely belated appearance of a mature ouvre, sprung like Athena from Zeus's
forehead. And the novels in themselves are extraordinary. I can think of
nothing much like it in fiction. Fraser maintains a masterfully ironic
distance from the extreme conditions in which his characters find
themselves. There are strikingly beautiful descriptions, veiled allusions to
rooted traditions, unlikely events half-glimpsed, abrupted narratives,
surreal but somehow apposite social customs. Like Thomas Pynchon, whom in
some way he resembles, Fraser is a deep and serious fantasist, wildly
inventive. The reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous
attention, with effects flashing by at virtuouso speeds. The characters seem
to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection the author
bestows upon them. They move with shrugging self-assurance through
circumstances as richly detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a
Chinese scroll.' (John Fuller, English poet, novelist, Booker Prize nominee
and Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, Oxford)