Sometimes it takes ten years to write a novel

... and this morning I wrote the final words of the novel I've always called Small Damages, save for that two-year period when I knew it as The Last Threads of Saffron.



These words as prologue:

Through the empty arch comes a wind, a mental wind blowing relentlessly over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents; a wind that smells of baby's spittle, crushed grass, and jellyfish veil, announcing the constant baptism of newly created things.

...