The You are a human animal. You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm.

This week in the studio, I'm talking to Charles Palliser, the author of Quincunx.

It's a book published both in hardcover and paperback by Ballantyne.

He's the author, Two, of the forthcoming novel, The Sensationalist.

Queen Conx is a rather unusual book for several reasons.

One is that it is a Victorian novel. Another is that,

given the fact that it is a Victorian novel, it has been chosen as one of the five best books of the year by Time magazine

and has been celebrated on both sides of the ocean, the product of

12 years intensive in reinventing the Victorian age. And I thought I'd begin by asking its author

Charles Palliser about that process of reconstitution. What did it entail?

Well, it meant reading an awful lot of Victorian fiction, which was something I, of course, enjoyed doing enormously.

And it was also part of my job because I was lecturing in English literature, specializing in Victorian fiction.

And it meant covering everything in order to reconstruct,

which is the term I sort of favour,

to reconstruct the language, form, assumptions and so on,

of a 19th century novel.

I wanted it to be as if the novel was written in about 1850,

and that meant things as kind of abstract and important,

but very intangible as getting the language right

...