“At some point in the summer of 1977, roughly eight months into a nightshift factory job in Grenoble, I woke up hungover one sweltering afternoon and decided to phone a close German friend, or perhaps it was my ex in Scotland, or my mother in England. There was a conversation I needed to have with someone, the main point of which I remember clearly. In order to count, the conversation had to be with someone I knew and in English rather than in the improving but still piss-poor French I now spoke every day to the exclusion of all else.”
Read more of Christopher Woodall’s reflections on his work and writing online at Berfrois.
