Robert Irwin is the author of several novels, as well as books on Islamic art and literature. His contribution to this anthology of prose and verse is an essay, ‘Your Novel Needs Indexing’. It starts off in tongue-in-cheek style, and one is justified in treating with scepticism Irwin’s claim that ‘I am always being asked by would-be novelists, “Should I index my novel and, if so, how do I set about it?”’, and indeed that ‘This sort of question comes ahead even of, “Does the novel I amplanning to write have to be typed on one side of the paper only?” and “Do I need an agent?”’

New Writing 9 is like a banquet, containing elements to satisfy a wide range of tastes, as well as functioning pleasingly as a whole. There are delicate aperitifs (“Mephisto” by Lavinia Greenlaw), tart little sequences (“from Aphorisms” by Don Paterson), rich sensual episodes (Julia O’Faolain’s “Morose Delectation”), obscure tastes for the refined palate (“Your Novel Needs Indexing” by Robert Irwin) and stronger stuff for afterwards (“Adult Video” by William Boyd, “Bad Ju-Ju” by Carlo Gebler). These come in all forms: essays for mental nourishment, poems for sensory delectation, and stories which embody different landscapes and climates. Although the volume covers subjects as far apart as transvestism in Northern Ireland and sperm banks, cement concept art and paedophilia in South Africa, it is united by wit and linguistic invention.