"[...] I love In the Heart of the Country, which I suppose a reviewer would describe as a metafictional novel narrated by an ageing white virgin in a remote corner of South Africa. It’s the best book I know about hysteria and also one of the best metafictions, nor is this a coincidence: metafiction is hysteria, it’s a feeling that you have not made contact with the world, that you do not know your dimensions, that you don’t know what sound you will make on contact with the