The break At twenty-nine I burned everything I had written. Not symbolically or as a gesture meant to dramatize a turning point, but quite literally, with the cold determination of someone who believes he has finally understood the limits of his own nature. Years of fragments,…

I stepped into the luxurious hall with – thankfully already familiar – the sensation that I had the privilege of touching something truly cultivated, civilization in its least pretentious guise, the elevating voice of literature, that sort of thing. I’m not joking, nor do I…

The sound of the footsteps – dragging and slow, like someone shuffling their heels across the floor – was driving him mad. Every time they came from above, he would change rooms: from the living room to the kitchen, then through the dreadfully creaky glazed door into the small…

Chapter one: Deadlock again Rain clouds, dark and puffed-up like turkeys, had been threatening to unleash their wrath on the dreary town all day, but so far had remained all threat and no action, as if to annoy everyone even more. Anne-Firecurl, herself gloomier than even the…