Stung by Woolf's condescending tone, and unpersuaded by her argument, Nicolson wrote again, criticising Fry and the Bloomsbury Group in yet stronger terms.
Ms von Lange, who has been dubbed literature's answer to the Spice Girls, saves her novel from sounding too condescending and portentous by injecting a heavy element of comedy into a book intended to upset the grown-ups.
The paradox of Dr Mahathir's career is that his determination to favour Malaysia's ethnic-Malay majority is matched by what seems to be an extraordinarily condescending attitude to that group.