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WILL, the Passenger Delaying Flight...
A man is travelling to Africa from Europe. And yet it is also about waiting – waiting for Africa.
Volker, a German, leaves his home in Frankfurt for Windhoek. He leaves a lover, he is leaving for a long time, and he does not have a return ticket. He does not know anything about Africa, to him it is one country, not a continent, neither does he really know where he is going to; he just knows that he wants to leave Europe.
Lufthansa, the airline that carries him stops at Charles de Gaulle airport and here he waits and waits and waits. And in the airport he observes and describes and thinks. The text is a stream of consciousness, Volker’s thoughts. Interspersed with this are stories of people he encounters in the airport; a murderer, a terrorist, a person with dwarfism, a trans woman, a porn star, a terrorist, a child trafficker, a paedophile. All are connected, with each other, with Volker and with us, the readers.
Adair’s novel is innovative in form, self-conscious and self-critical; it challenges conventional Western assumptions that all good novels have a clear story line, a good plot and fully rounded characters.
Volker, a German, leaves his home in Frankfurt for Windhoek. He leaves a lover, he is leaving for a long time, and he does not have a return ticket. He does not know anything about Africa, to him it is one country, not a continent, neither does he really know where he is going to; he just knows that he wants to leave Europe.
Lufthansa, the airline that carries him stops at Charles de Gaulle airport and here he waits and waits and waits. And in the airport he observes and describes and thinks. The text is a stream of consciousness, Volker’s thoughts. Interspersed with this are stories of people he encounters in the airport; a murderer, a terrorist, a person with dwarfism, a trans woman, a porn star, a terrorist, a child trafficker, a paedophile. All are connected, with each other, with Volker and with us, the readers.
Adair’s novel is innovative in form, self-conscious and self-critical; it challenges conventional Western assumptions that all good novels have a clear story line, a good plot and fully rounded characters.
160 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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April 20, 2020Read the book bite for the Sumday Times: https://bit.ly/3bZFHeU
~Do we all have no reason, I am born and I died and the reason for being in this airport is that I am alive, I am alive so I may as well be in this airport, walking.~
~ Charles Grayson Smith, Junior, is a traveller. This is what he now calls himself, as he is aware that in the world it is necessary to call oneself something for labels give meaning to the other otherwise meaningless. It is important to have an identity.~
~I wish I did not have to do this work, if only I could just fuck for money, I hate to be polite, it annoys me, the higher I soar the smaller I am to those who cannot fly, but I cannot fly, I am a waitress in the sky...~
~Jack Kerouac was slim and blond and heterosexual; the all-American good-looking boy. . . Truman Capote was also blond, but he was short and fat and homosexual and sometimes a bitch.~
~Vivienne Westwood dressed Sid Vicious until the day he died; this was not for long as he died young.~
~Karl's belief is the more you stand out in the crowd the less you are noticed, so being a clown is an excellent disguise for a terrorist.~
~On one occasion the buyer was in a wheelchair so there was no real need to request that he worse specific clothing, but Wallace did anyway as he does not believe the disabled should be identified purely in relation to their disability.~
~Do we all have no reason, I am born and I died and the reason for being in this airport is that I am alive, I am alive so I may as well be in this airport, walking.~
~ Charles Grayson Smith, Junior, is a traveller. This is what he now calls himself, as he is aware that in the world it is necessary to call oneself something for labels give meaning to the other otherwise meaningless. It is important to have an identity.~
~I wish I did not have to do this work, if only I could just fuck for money, I hate to be polite, it annoys me, the higher I soar the smaller I am to those who cannot fly, but I cannot fly, I am a waitress in the sky...~
~Jack Kerouac was slim and blond and heterosexual; the all-American good-looking boy. . . Truman Capote was also blond, but he was short and fat and homosexual and sometimes a bitch.~
~Vivienne Westwood dressed Sid Vicious until the day he died; this was not for long as he died young.~
~Karl's belief is the more you stand out in the crowd the less you are noticed, so being a clown is an excellent disguise for a terrorist.~
~On one occasion the buyer was in a wheelchair so there was no real need to request that he worse specific clothing, but Wallace did anyway as he does not believe the disabled should be identified purely in relation to their disability.~
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