![]() ![]() The tragedy had taken hold of me ever since I had happened upon the story, due to its strangeness, and due to the theories behind its cause. One night during the summer of 1951 in the town of Pont St-Esprit, 250 inhabitants found themselves struck by terrible hallucinations seven died, while more were committed to asylums. My previous two novels had tended towards the speculative, but this time I was working from the seed of a fact-a real-life case of a mass poisoning in South France-and so branching out, technically, into historical fiction. I have always loved that moment, the plunging into possibility, and this time I felt an extra edge of excitement, because I was striking out into what felt like vaguely uncharted territory. It was a day that felt like a small miracle, clear blue sky and freshness, and I went afterwards to a nearby cafe and sat and wrote the first sentence of what would become Cursed Bread. I was the only one there for quite some time, observing small and perfectly-formed ceramic sculptures. It was still as a cathedral, bathed in white light. On January 2nd, 2020, with no idea what to come, I started off the year by taking a long bus into central London, and then walked around a small art gallery where you had to take your shoes off. ![]()
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