Lunch…

…with friends on the terrasse of their villa overlooking a hidden azure inlet of the Mediterranean. A beautiful day! The villa is owned by Christopher and Koukla MacLehose. Christopher is a legendary British publisher (Scottish, of course) specializing in publishing novels in translation. Koukla was, for many years, the UK’s leading book scout. It was she who discovered the French translation of my book, “The Blackhouse”, lying on a desk in an office of French publisher Actes Sud. She took it to Christopher who wanted to publish it, until he discovered that it had been written in English, which went against his brief. So he passed it to a colleague at Quercus, Jon Riley, who loved it, published it, and has been my editor ever since.