I think my parents were bewildered by my oddity. Conceived in the honeymoon suite of a hotel run by two penitent French fascists in an algid village near Valgrisanche, I was a child of love and not conjugal duty and thus and only thus, as my father once suggested, were certain “vital fluids” conferred unto me ...

From that now-mythical hotel, the blue-white Alps could be seen through a froth of huge and creamy Sombreuil roses and it was with this realization that my father claimed to know his first child would be female. After a twenty-seven hour labor, I was born by Caesarean section on the cusp of the hour ruled by the angel Gabriel, whom the Mohammedans understand to be the spirit of truth, the ruler of the first heaven and also the angel who came with light to the cave in which Mohammed prayed, that same Mohammed with whom I share a birthday in the northern autumn and subequatorial spring. I emerged surprised and blind and blinking and covered like a monkey in fine long black hairs. For the first three months of life, I wept continuously and then spoke my first sentence at ten. My mother's breasts were suckled by me until they bled a milk-streaked blood. I have been told these things. Only fantasists remember.

EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE
(for more info, click authors/books links below)

· PREORDER A COPY
- The Pure Weight of the Heart