September 27, 2022   •   By Porochista Khakpour

Novelists create characters that become real for some people. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and George Smiley all have addresses in London. I am sure many people think they actually existed. And yet, in comparison to their vivid reality, I am virtually non-existent. And I am real! That is why I need to write this book. To create myself. To write myself into existence (and an address in London would be nice too). I just need to stay positive. I don’t want this to be a sad book. I don’t read sad books …

Just to be clear, I had no intention of writing a novel until I started living in one! And the fact that I am the central character is, of course, unavoidable. What you have in your hands is a book that was meant to be a fairly uncommon form of literature, a journal of thoughts and ideas that became, for convenience more than any other reason, a diary of sorts. Then my life (my suddenly surreal life) rather hijacked the whole project and left me no choice but to write it up and put it all in. I have done my best to keep the first part more or less as it was intended. Then, as you know, all of a sudden, it’s the greatest story ever told! Sorry about that.

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