Tom McCarthy's six favorite books about nothing

Tom McCarthy is the author of Remainder, C, and Men in Space, the last of which has just been published in the U.S.

One of his six favorite books about nothing, as told to The Week magazine:

Ulysses by James Joyce

A man buys offal for his breakfast, visits a newspaper office, a restaurant, a brothel; another man paces a beach; a woman gets her period; a scrap of paper floats downriver. And at the same time, Odysseus is reunited with Penelope, all of history is compressed into a single day, and Western literature surges toward its apotheosis.

Read about the other books on the list.

Ulysses is on Alice-Azania Jarvis's reading list on grammar, George Vecsey's list of six favorite books, Nina MacLaughlin's top ten list of dirty old (literary) men, John Mullan's lists of the ten of the best parodies, ten of the best Hamlets in literature, ten of the best visits to the lavatory, and ten of the best vegetables in literature. It appears on Frank Delaney's top ten list of Irish novels and five best list of books about Ireland.

Also see Tom McCarthy's top 10 European modernists and Tom McCarthy's literary top 10.

--Marshal Zeringue