Frozen desire - James Buchan

'Frozen Desire is concerned with humanity itself. Describing a portrait of Judas, Buchan observes: "Money provokes people to act, for the sake of payment, in a fashion that, if they knew how the action would turn out, they would not contemplate." This sustained, wide-ranging essay has a spiritual quality' Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

'A delightfully quirky book about one man's obsession with everybody else's obsession with money . . . a great read' William Keegan, Guardian

'An original, elegant, powerful and often beautiful work . . . Buchan in full flow is magnificent' Nick Cohen, New Statesman

'Easily the most pleasure I've had from a book this year . . . A journey through the dangerous and little-exposed country between the novelist's rough pasture and the neat fields of the economist' Martin Taylor, Sunday Telegraph

'Buchan's picture of monetary "culture" strikes me as irrefutable' Michael Dirda, Washington Post

'A fascinating book, full of learning and poetically written . . . For its many insight into what money has meant to different people in history, as well as for its passion, Frozen Desire deserves to be read' The Economist