This book is a twisted love story. It is also a theory of literature. Mostly it is about the love of one word: ‘veering’. This word does not occur with enormous frequency, either in literature or in everyday language, but that is perhaps part of its charm. In the pages that follow I explore ‘veering’ as a sort of pivot for thinking about literature and its relation to the world.

It may seem an odd or unpropitious time to be offering a theory of literature. It is the sort of thing one associates with fifty years ago, with the writings of Roland Barthes (Theory of the Text) or Harold Bloom (The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry). Theory has, as they say, had its day. Books with titles such as After Theory and Post Theory have been around for some time. Indeed there are not a few people who suppose that literature, also, has had its day. The love of literature is thus perceived to be in decline, if not actually doomed. More passion is aroused by film, television, the internet, gaming and so on. As a subject of study, literature seems to have become largely absorbed into a broader, more diffuse area, sometimes given the name ‘cultural studies’ or ‘cultural history’.