A Moving Target is a collection of short non-fiction pieces, originally delivered by Golding as lectures or written for magazines and newspapers. Part one, "Places", contains both accounts of actual trips — to Holland (by sailing boat), Delphi, and Egypt — and more general reflections on places — Golding's love for Wiltshire, a comparison of Winchester and Salisbury cathedrals, and his boyhood fascination with ancient Egypt. Part two, "Ideas", begins with some short book reviews, then moves on to broader themes of literature and writing. Here we have Golding writing about the great English diarists, about utopian and anti-utopian fiction, about his own poetry, and — in several pieces — about the novel and novel-writing, the spiritual and inspirational aspects of which are stressed.

A Moving Target concludes with Golding's speech accepting the 1983 Nobel Prize for literature; the volume as a whole does a good job of illustrating why he won that prize.

February 1996

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