BOOKS: PICK OF THE WEEK

Michael Frayn Mon University of East Anglia, Norwich

The UEA's excellent autumn programme continues this week with novelist Michael Frayn, who will read from Headlong (Faber pounds 16.99), his Booker-nominated novel about art, happiness and wily old country folk.

While taking a break at their second home in the country, Martin Clay, a philospher, and his wife are invited to dinner with Tony Churt, the local landowner. There, Clay, asked to give his opinion about some old paintings the cash-strapped landowner hopes to offload, thinks he's found a missing Bruegel. Keeping the information to himself, he slowly works a wonderfully confused sting operation to relieve the unknowing Churt of the painting.

Along the way, this fast-paced comedy is mixed with a fascinating art-history investigation into the political and cultural background to Bruegel's 16th-century Netherlands, as the story moves towards its inevitable conclusion.

Lecture Theatre 1, UEA (01603 508050) Mon, 7pm, pounds 3.50/pounds 2

Stuart Price