She seems to be afraid. The way she sits on the bed, her legs drawn up, and the way the blanket covers them and is pulled up to her throat. And look at her face, it seems …

Wang Meng, one of China’s most influential post-revolutionary writers, came to international literary prominence after overcoming twenty years of internal exile in forced labor camps.

For a few years I had a garden in a ruined village. I worked through the long summer afternoons on a limestone upland full of the sound of cicadas, in a place that I had found.

It is morning, about ten o'clock. An hour ago I slipped and fell against the dull rim of the bathtub and broke what must be my right clavicle. 

Ten miles south of Norfolk, Vonnie took the Tourguide map from the Rambler glove compartment and spread it out across her knees. Plotting rough co-ordinates on a Portsmouth Nags Head axis, she ignored the printed mileage chart and gauged the distance south with a makeshift caliper of thumb and index finger.

“Phillip,” she said, “this is crazy.” I didn’t agree or disagree. She wanted some answer. I bit her neck. She kissed my ear. It was nearly three in the morning. We had just returned.

I scribbled a hasty note, regretful, to the point. Fourteen pages, sharp as knives. I refuse. I don’t feel good. The date is inconvenient. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Then I stopped and sat rigid as a sphinx. Henry was my dearest friend. 

He phoned his wife at her lover’s apartment. She asked him to repeat himself. He was sobbing and unintelligible. He wanted her to come home and collect her clothes.

Onstage, I’m thinking about the ­postman who was so overwhelmed by the amount of mail he had to deliver that he threw it all, and then himself, into the sea. 

A pockmarked redheaded man with a leather case in hand hurried along Endell Street, humming.

Endell Street used to be the Tin Pan Alley of London. It is short, drab and quiet. The trade has