Radical even in the 21st century : Composed long before there were rules about what a novel is supposed to look like, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy is a visionary piece of literature, a book so original in construction it almost defies genre. Conceived by an Anglican vicar who, under the comic influence of Rabelais and Swift and equally informed by Cervantes and Shakespeare, turned to writing fiction later in his life, it is an inadvertent masterpiece, the product of a writer who just...
