Tiger Garden

Drawn to dreams for what they are rather than what they may or may not represent, editor Nicholas Royle presents the intimate visions and unconscious thoughts of more than 200 novelists and short story writers from across the world. Madison Smartt Bell rides in an elevator with Bill Clinton, who has grown a beard, while Rupert Thomson comes face to face with Margaret Thatcher, who hasn't. Gary Indiana's mother, meanwhile, is going out with Hitler. Michelle Roberts climbs into a microlight with a couple of nuns, but Jan Morris takes the controls herself and flies solo - her only problem is ground control talking in Mongolian. Jonathan Coe's reunion gig is already a total disaster by the time his keyboard starts turning into a pizza. Donna Tartt watches while brains are dished up with a French sauce and herb garnish - human brains, that is. William Wharton watches his friends devoured by lions, Fay Weldon has a brush with death on a mountain road. Marina Warner is offered a hilarious private view of a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition in Haiti. At a VS Naipaul colloquium, Nicholas Shakespeare learns that Alice Fell has been assassinated. Alison Fell, meanwhile, witnesses an air disaster on a hillside outside Lockerbie in 1953. The Tiger Garden is a revelatory book that tells us much about the unconscious side of the creative process.