It’s the Galle Literary Festival, on the south coast of Sri Lanka. Your new novel—about the interior life of a World War I sapper—just hit the bestseller list, you’ve sold the film rights, and Daniel Craig is attached to star. The producers are pressing you for a scene in which he wears a gas mask, bare-chested.
You're on a panel with a novelist currently ranking three slots above you on the bestseller list. You're close to tongue-tied, but that's fine: she has plenty to say. Her Booker Prize-winning autofiction drives a juggernaut through the literary tropes you've built your career on. And when she mentions Lévi-Strauss, she doesn’t mean jeans.
