"Have you noticed that Amsterdam's concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? A middle-class hell, of course." Jean-Baptiste Clamence addresses a chance acquaintance in an Amsterdam bar. A successful Paris barrister - the epitome of good citizenship and decent behaviour - he has now come to recognise the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His brilliant, epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency. 'Camus is the accused, his own prosecutor and advocate. The Fall might have been called "The Last Judgement".' Oliver Todd