The Man Within My Head, By Pico Iyer

A singular hybrid of memoir and biography, this intriguing experiment concerns one globe-trotting writer's obsession with another.

Occasionally, Iyer's desire for closeness touches on the risible: "I had no reason to be aware that Graham Greene himself had lived for a time off the Woodstock Road… the road on which I was born".

But more often, you are moved by his sinuous interweaving of real and literary fathers. Iyer acutely notes Greene's "ability to write with harrowing compassion for every character except the one who might be... Greene."