Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

I want to acknowledge the support of some kind people who let me hang around their houses while apparently doing nothing. Bob and Elisabeth Boas for their generosity regarding Rome and for providing me with the happiest editing environment to date. And Stuart and Kate, for the use of their apartment on Lake Orta where there really is nothing to do but write the goddamn book; thank you.

I am grateful to Simon Mulligan for an enlightening half-hour on the phone. To my brother-in-law, Dr. Vincent Khoo, consultant at The Royal Marsden, for ensuring medical accuracy where required and pointing me to the right pills. And to Ian Leslie, an early reader, who took me to Veselka when I was starting and El Bulli when I had finished.

Here, too, the fondest of tributes to my brothers and sisters, who always get it, even when no one else does. Especially this time to Adelaide, who has the finest literary taste in the English-speaking world—always quick with that roll of tens; thanks, JP; nothing is revealed.

Last and most important, a great deal more than thanks to Emma—there’s nothing I can say that would cover it; you are the beauty and the light and the better part of what I am.

And after it’s finished, and before it all begins again, a thank-you to BD: still the greatest living artist, the only soul to whom I listen every day, and one of the few who know what it can cost a man to really get something done around here.

EDWARD DOCX is the author of the acclaimed The Calligrapher , named a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He lives in London.

Copyright © 2008 by Docx Ltd.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.comor to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Docx, Edward.

Pravda / Edward Docx.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-53440-1

ISBN-10: 0-618-53440-7

1. Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6104.028P73 2007

823'.92—dc22 2007008523

eISBN 978-0-547-34692-2

v2.1017

Lines from “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” by Bob Dylan copyright © 1978 Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission