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Dear and Illustrious Friend,
Permit me to inscribe your name at the head of this book, and above its dedication; for it is mainly to you that I owe its publication. Handled by your magnificent pleading, my work seems in my own eyes to have acquired, as it were, an unlooked-for authority. So accept here the tribute of my gratitude, which, however great it may be, will never reach the heights of your own eloquence and devotion.
Dedication of Madam Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, 1857

I met a 60 year old failure of a writer who cannot afford electricity and who's learnt Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, English. He's selling his flat, sits without light or fan, smoking beedi after beedi which seem to last half a minute each. There are maybe a couple of thousand books in all those languages piled up all over the house. So we sat there enveloped in darkness and smoke and books and the weight of a lifetime of failure. I had come in to look at his flat, but stayed for an hour and a half, more listening than talking and he seemed happy to have me.

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