[In Malcolm Bradbury's Rates of Exchange] Slaka is a volatile state in the Soviet orbit. Its 'history is a mystery' because at various times it has been conquered by every tribe in existence. This quirky Ruritania is in permanent flux: the grammatical structure of its language alters overnight (the populace obediently setting aside time in which to change placards), there are several financial systems, and the world beyond the capital is shrouded in mystery. It is a landscape in which gross confusion stems from an attempt to be organised.

Into this world comes Dr Petworth, a minor academic from an even less exalted institute of higher education, a linguist despatched by the British Council on a culture tour. Much of his life has been spent exporting 'the ideal British product': the English language. Almost permanently on the move from country to country, he can discern only the drab similarities of his destinations rather than the exciting differences. As genteelly crumpled as his lecture notes, Petworth is menopausal, almost always fatigued, and never fights back when riled. Our hero in Rates of Exchange, with his paper-clips and Fontana Modern Masters, would seem almost wholly unappealing. Bradbury's success, however, is to conduct us behind the ungalvanic facade so that we come to realise that the meekness is in fact virtue. Petworth, 'a speech without a subject, a verb without a noun, certainly not a character in the world historical sense', is nevertheless the only still point in a convulsively turning world.

Into his latest novel Bradbury has hurled all his pet hates, coming to terms with what bores him by making it comic: airports, immigration controls,… couriers. His world is one where irritating fads breed like Ionesco's chairs. This would pall were Bradbury not able to turn it into a theatre of the absurd…. [In] his novels he writes as a critic (where he gives the impression of being a wry commentator on his characters' activities rather than the inventor of them) and in his criticism he is enormously creative (making imaginative connections and absorbing himself in what he writes about). He plays one role under the guise of the other.

To depict Slaka he develops a style that easily allows both farce and seriousness. Intermingled with the jokes is a subtle disquisition about freedom and privacy. There is no unemployment in Slaka because everybody is officially occupied spying on everybody else. Rooms are abristle with sonic lugs and behind every mirror lurks a member of the secret police who minutely scrutinises one's ablutions. Watched in this way the citizens become actors, learning to disguise their real emotions with such skill that they don't know what an authentic feeling would be like. In this bizarre world of duplicity and stratagem the mild-mannered Petworth appears a subversive warrior. His gentle honesty, in the midst of such mendacity, seems like dissident troublesomeness. He is temperamentally unsuited to barter on this psychological rate of exchange.