The other day I held a paperback book I wrote for the first time. It felt damn fine. I stroked the paper. I smelled it. We opened a bottle of champagne.

I had held a paperback I wrote a few years ago when the French publisher of my first book, Salt Magic, Skin Magic, sent me a complimentary copy of the translation. That was a very nice feeling. But it was, of course, in French. I couldn’t read it. It was my book but it wasn’t my book.