“So what happens next?” “Nothing,” Grossman would reply, and this imaginary meeting would soon be over.Grossman’s fiction is driven by his obsession with his characters’ inner lives, which revolve around delicate, mostly invisible plot lines. “And in the other novella, ‘Her Body Knows,’” he’d continue, “a daughter is reconciled with her dying mother, a former yoga teacher and immature single parent. Sitting by her bed, the daughter reads a story she has written about a painful true incident: how the mother gave yoga instruction to an unusual 15-year-old boy which culminated in a sort of love affair. He convinces himself she’s had a secret lover for a decade, imagines their meetings, and stalks her when she goes away. On a long night drive from Jerusalem, he tells all to a receptive sister-in-law.”

The producer would wait for more, but Grossman’s silence would indicate that would be it.

I imagine that Israeli novelist David Grossman would have a hard time persuading a tough Hollywood producer that the two novellas in Lovers and Strangers would make good material for a film. His pitch would go something like this: “‘Frenzy’ is about a man’s obsession with his wife. Stephanie’s visit coincides with that of Edward Morton, a blind translator – and more alluring father-figure A gentle, if perplexing, drama about interconnecting lives EH. Manager Malcolm Caldecott is coming to terms with losing his job and meeting his estranged daughter.

BTInvisible, by Jonathan Buckley (HARPERPERENNIAL £7.99 (342pp))A fading country-house hotel in the west of England provides the backdrop to a complicated set of relationships in Buckley’s latest novel. In style and sensibility, Vienna and Berlin come to Walton-on-Thames – with quite unforgettable results. It’s the story of a moneyed but marginal upbringing as the fiercely observant son of a migrant impresario, who brought the rich flavours and high passions of the European avant-garde to the prewar stockbroker belt. A trustworthy companion for every reading group – or simply for the solitary seeker. BTGerms, by Richard Wollheim (BLACK SWAN £7.99 (307pp))Before he died in 2003, philosopher Richard Wollheim completed this strange, singular masterpiece of a childhood memoir. In the second, a niftly cross-referenced A-Z introduces hundreds of novelists and recommends their work, from Monica Ali to Emile Zola. In its first half, 34 single-subject essays cover the gamut of fictional forms and themes, from Michael Dibdin on crime and Mich? Roberts on France to Nigel Williams on humour and Elizabeth Buchan on romance (modesty forbids comment on the historical-novels chapter).

BTGood Fiction Guide, edited by Jane Rogers (OXFORD £9.99 (520pp)) A welcome update, and a bright new boiled-sweets cover, for the most reader-friendly literary guide on the reference shelf. From the beliefs of Japan’s kamikaze pilots to the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual godfather of al-Qa’ida, it amounts to a salutary tale of “cross-contamination” and “the spread of bad ideas”. With well-chosen examples and a forensic style, the authors argue that militant jihadis have mirrored the disgust at Western democracy and “decadence” found among German conservatives, Russian nativists, Marxist Utopians, and sundry other local prophets of doom. EHOccidentalism, by Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit (ATLANTIC £8.99 (165pp))Pithy, cool and incisive, this illuminating book looks for the sources of radical “Islamist” hatred of the West It locates them in.. Europe itself.