Brian Cox's story about The Dice Man

One of the most influential books I have ever read was called "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart, the penname of George Cockcroft. Of course, there are certainly better books that scale the heights of man's journey, like for example, "Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy and "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, but the appeal of "The Dice Man" is that it fixes at a point in time, a point when the idea of risk in life and the existential notion of risk was a very exciting idea. The idea that your life can be lived by a roll of a dice when usually in life so much of the time we try to structure what we do and how we live it, as if we are in control, but the truth is, I think, that we are never really in control as much as we would like to think we are. What Rhinehart does in this novel is turn this idea on its head and sends you into an unknowing and challenging destiny, all based on the shake of a dice. This book has been republished many times over the years, and even at times been banned. However, each new generation that discovers it, finds I think, aspects to relate to and in a way this is what keeps the novel timeless - it speaks to many generations. In my generation for example, it was about dare and risk and a dispelling of the notion of any kind of certainty. A very challenging, funny, revealing and witty book.