“It’s usually pronounced ‘Yale’,” John McElroy informs him from the neighbouring studio, where he is

following the script on an oversized iPad. The Irish-accented author resumes his intense narration: “A
decade after the bombing, the family of Yael Botwin —”

McCann has the words and pronunciation right this time, but McElroy interrupts again. “Do you need to
burp? It felt like you were holding something back.”

McCann insists that he is fine and starts again. “OK. Yael Botwin. Yale? Are you sure? Not Ya-el?”
McElroy confirms the pronunciation and throws in two lines of Yale University’s fight song to plant it in
the novelist’s mind.

Colum McCann records his latest novel 'Apeirogon' in a New York studio earlier this month © PRH Audio

McCann will spend five days in the Manhattan studio for an audiobook that will appear with his novel
next February. The process is “physically enormously demanding”, he says — but he has good reason to
put in the effort: audiobooks, long seen as a backwater of the book industry, have become its greatest
growth story.

The boom has transformed the format’s attractions for authors, publishers and narrators, and sparked
fights over the spoils with the digital platforms through which they are attracting new audiences. The
industry began the decade consumed by the question of how ebooks would upturn it — yet in the US,
sales of ebooks peaked in 2014 and have been falling since.

“Everybody thought the ebook was going to be the thing, and it turns out the audiobook is the thing,”
says Maria Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers.

Her members’ audiobook revenue shot up from $200m in 2010 to more than $500m in 2018, or 6.6 per
cent of industry sales. Including Amazon’s imprints and self-published titles on its Audible and ACX
platforms, US sales are approaching $1bn. Audiobooks are growing even faster in the UK, jumping by 43
per cent between 2017 and 2018 to reach £69m, according to Nielsen. Global sales, according to
forecasts by Deloitte, could hit $3.5bn in 2020.
“At the beginning there was a feeling that it was a fad and it wouldn’t stick,” recalls Patch McQuaid, who
started his London studio business with unwanted equipment after the CD-Rom fad faded. “Digital
changed everything.”

The story of the audiobook boom is not just a financial one, though: it is one of the unexpected effects
that techno-logy has had on us — and of our need to escape technology. Whether our genre is self-
improvement or frothy romance, it also speaks volumes about how we have responded to a decade of
dislocation and distraction.

Before Silicon Valley put smartphones in our pockets, digital media players on our dashboards and smart
speakers in our kitchens, technology had already changed Sean Pratt’s career. The Oklahoma-based
theatre veteran has narrated more than 1,000 titles, from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest to a five-
volume history of California. When he started 24 years ago, publishers would send him physical books
with VHS video tapes on which they wanted him to record.

Narrators are paid per finished hour (typically $175-$300 in the US or £75-£120 in the UK), so making a
living as a narrator “is all about efficiency in the studio”, he says. Digital files and cheap recording
equipment have transformed the economics of home studios.

Charlie Sanderson, who works from home near Winchester, in the south of England, recalls that 10 years
ago she would mark up books on paper and use a Dictaphone to check which voice she had assigned
each character. “Now I do everything on an iPad.”

For Jot Davies, an award-winning UK narrator, technology has allowed him to ask authors on Twitter
what they had in mind for a character. (He has lower-tech tricks too, such as wearing cashmere sweaters
so that microphones pick up no rustling.)

The key remains preparation, says Finlay Robertson, a London-based actor who colour-codes characters
on his iPad to help him switch between accents that he masters using online samples. “Be careful of the
choices you make on page one,” he warns. “If the character is talking a lot by page 500 and you’ve
decided to give him a throaty rasp, you could be in trouble.”

Failing to spot such traps in advance can be disastrous, echoes Ana Clements, who traded a job in
accounts for the flexibility of recording from her home in Devon. “Authors have a tendency right at the
end of the book to say, ‘And his mother turned to him, her Irish lilt coming through’.”
McCann knows his text too well to make that mistake, but he has come to respect a craft that many
authors once ignored. When the audiobook for Let the Great World Spin came up, he says: “I went for
an audition and didn’t get the job.”

For publishers, digital downloads, falling production costs and rising demand mean they no longer have
to abridge books to fit CDs, agonise over which titles to record or let neglected audio rights revert to
authors.

“It’s hard to find a book today other than a cookbook that is not available in audio,” says Chris Lynch,
publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio. Almost 45,000 were produced in the US alone last year, and the
improved range has pulled in a wider, younger audience.

That in turn has attracted big-name narrators such as Stephen Fry, the voice of Sherlock Holmes.
Michelle Obama’s 19-hour narration of her autobiography Becoming has spent more than a year on the
bestseller lists and earned a Grammy nomination.

Publishers are now willing to spend five-figure sums on more ambitious productions. Simon & Schuster
had 15 actors and Russian pronunciation experts on call this year to turn around a recording of the
Mueller Report in 48 hours, while Penguin Random House cast 166 voices for George Saunders’ 2017
novel Lincoln in the Bardo.

Amanda D’Acierno, publisher of PRH Audio was one of those voices. With English-language books now
“saturated”, she says, she is investing in Spanish-language recordings and Broadway productions such as
Angels in America. She knows no business can grow at this pace forever, “but when we look at what’s
happening in the space it’s hard to contain your optimism”.

Recommended

Macmillan Audio: ‘American Dirt’ by Jeanine Cummins

A decade of growth has created “a much bigger pie” for all industry participants to share, says Mary
Beth Roche, publisher of Macmillan Audio. All the same, her peers are increasingly uneasy about the
slice taken by the platforms through which we access their titles. None looms larger than Audible.
As Enders Analysis put it last year, the Amazon offshoot is a “frenemy” to publishers that has breathed
new life into the format but also threatens publishers more in audio than Amazon does in print or
ebooks.

When Amazon acquired Audible in 2008, it had just 88,000 titles. Now it boasts more than 470,000. It
does not disclose how many people pay $14.95 a month to access them but one researcher, Codex
Group, estimates that Audible controls 41 per cent of US downloads and that Amazon’s titles take the
total to 60 per cent.

Its power is such that no publisher the FT spoke to would confirm its market share or what cut it takes of
each download. But narrators such as Pratt are clear: “They’re the 800-pound gorilla.”

To listen to a robot for 10 hours, it might drive you crazy

Anthony Goff, publisher of Hachette Audio

After years of coexisting warily with the industry’s biggest beast, publishers are now starting to
challenge it. The trigger was Audible’s decision this summer to add a “captions” feature to its app,
displaying an AI-generated transcription as a recording plays. To publishers, this is a “glaring
infringement” of text rights Audible has not paid for. To Audible, it is fair use.

The lawsuit may be a skirmish before a bigger battle that reflects how concerns about the power of tech
have grown over the decade. Maria Pallante of the AAP wrote to the US Federal Trade Commission in
June, urging closer scrutiny of Amazon and other digital giants which, she argued, threaten the
marketplace of ideas.

“The reality is that publishers have to be on certain platforms to be competitive but when those
platforms . . . engage in unfair practices, the only way to promote fair competition is for governments to
step in,” she says. “The time has come to regulate.”

Another tech-based fear hangs over the business as a new decade app-roaches. Like other workers
wondering when robots might take their jobs, narrators are eyeing new AI-driven text-to-speech
technologies with concern. So far, says Pratt, the competition is limited because voice-cloning misses
nuance. “It doesn’t understand sarcasm. The only way you can [fix that] is if you have an engineer
saying, ‘We have to make it sarcastic here’. By the time you do that you could have had me record it.”
Synthetic voices might, however, make inroads in the self-improving non-fiction titles consumed by
thrusting business listeners, he says: “The up-at-4-o’clock-on-the-StairMaster people, they don’t care
about the voice.”

Anthony Goff, publisher of Hachette Audio, puts his doubts more bluntly: “To listen to a robot for 10
hours, it might drive you crazy.”

Share your suggestions

Any listening recommendations? Please share your suggestions for your favourite audiobooks in the
comments below

Besides, the people who produce audiobooks attribute their success in part to our need to escape the
robots — or at least to tune out the news on our screens and reconnect to something simpler from pre-
mobile times. Ask them why business is so good right now and more narrators mention the primal tug of
bedtime stories and campfire tales than iPhones or Echos.

“Storytelling is such an essential part of being a human being,” says Finlay Robertson. “Often our earliest
memories are of our parents reading us stories so we could relax enough into that scary world of going
to sleep. The rise in audio-books is definitely connected to the feeling that the world’s never been a
more uncertain place.”

Publishers had grown used to their audience multitasking while consuming audiobooks but have been
surprised to see that change as listeners crave “me time”. “The biggest growth in the past 12 to 18
months is people at home doing nothing but listening. They’re using it to unwind,” says Goff at
Hachette.

Today’s audiobook may be the product of the age of digital disruption but as our uneasy relationship
with techno-logy consumes ever more of our waking hours, he says, “it gives you a chance to close your
eyes and have somebody tell you a story, just like your mother and father once did”.

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is the FT’s US business editor

Publishing’s digital decade

The digital boom of the 2010s set the publishing industry spinning, with technology creating new
opportunities as well as existential anxiety over the future of the printed book, writes Madeleine
Pollard.

When Amazon debuted the Kindle ereader in 2007, it was lauded as a revolution in reading. From 2008
to 2012, ebooks had their sharpest rise in sales, alongside a steady decline across all print formats; the
Association of American Publishers cites a peak in revenue of nearly $1.4bn in 2014 for adult ebooks in
the US.

With digital reading formats came easier access to self-publishing on platforms such as Kindle Direct. In
2017, Amazon reported that in the US more than 1,000 authors who self-published on the Kindle
platform made upwards of $100,000 in royalties.

By the middle of the decade, though, sales of ereaders had already peaked. Just as the dominance of
digital music downloads now coexists happily with the return of vinyl, the physical book has not only
prevailed but taken on a new cultural cachet — in part, thanks to social media. Images of carefully
curated bookshelves and vintage covers saturate Instagram, where the hashtag #books has almost 40m
posts.

Small and independent publishers have responded with an emphasis on the design of their product,
such as Fitzcarraldo Editions’ minimalist, lightweight paperbacks and Visual Editions’ experimental
tactile pieces, while the bigger publishing houses have made clothbound series of classics and limited
editions of blockbuster authors’ latest works.

In a similar vein, despite fears that ecommerce behemoths such as Amazon would eradicate physical
bookshops, there has been a recent resurgence of independent booksellers in both the US and UK.
Industry magazine The Bookseller reports that in 2018 the number of independent bookshops in the UK
rose for the second year in a row to 883.

As for book readers, in a decade of digital disruption, anxiety about AI and upheaval in international
politics, they appear to be turning to non-fiction to try to make sense of it all — it has been the biggest
selling category in print in the US since 2014, amust be another woman. What else could it be?

The sound of a child wailing pierced the air just then, followed by the doorbell — assertive, impatient.
When the door was opened Robert marched in carrying a howling toddler in one arm, a bouquet of red
roses in the other, his face flushed the same shade. Four children hot on his heels, and behind them
came Sarah, his wife, carrying a large bag, looking tired.
“Oh, dear, what happened?” Mrs Chorbadjian rushed towards them.

Robert glared at the crying girl. “First she bites her brother — when we tell her to stop, she throws a
tantrum.”

To be fair, she didn’t exactly show her age. She hardly looked 85. Everyone said so, especially on days
she had rested and eaten well. This was not one of those days, though. The night before she had tossed
and turned in the double bed where she slept alone since her husband’s death, a clamour of concerns
and fears coursing through her mind. She wanted, no, she needed her birthday dinner to be perfect.
Everything had to come about exquisitely — the food, the drinks, the talks, the atmosphere. Not only for
her sake, but also for her children’s and grandchildren’s. Lately there had been tension among her three
sons, and she was hoping that this family gathering might help to melt the ice. Family gathering, she
thought to herself. What a peculiar concept! When she was growing up, there was no such thing. Why
should there be? You didn’t have to bring together what was never apart. You knew that you were
always with each other, at every meal and every fast, both the spirits of the living and the ghosts of the
past.

This morning, up on her feet at dawn, despite her aching limbs and weary eyes, she had baked a trayful
of her favourite dessert. Sweet and crunchy, a decent portion of khadaif would go a long way, warming
anyone’s heart — even hearts hardened by stupid, stupid politics! Her sons had always held different
political views but lately views had turned into certainties and certainties into head-clashing battles in
which nobody won, everyone bled a little. Even so, tonight they would all tuck into the mouth-watering
khadaif, her three sons and their loved ones, and that should amount to something, of this she had no
doubt. For Mrs Chorbadjian was one of those women restlessly bent on feeding the people around
them, strangers and relatives alike, urged on by some unshakeable belief that if only everyone had a
fuller belly, the world would be, if not a better place, at least a calmer one.

Sitting now in a moss-green velvet armchair by the window, Mrs Chorbadjian tried to concentrate on the
crossword puzzle by her side, to no avail. She sighed. Maybe her late husband was right, after all. Maybe
she had a tendency to worry too much — “tendency” being one of those words he used habitually. Then
again, Mrs Chorbadjian believed, only two kinds of people in this world succeeded in not worrying: the
fools and the optimists, which as far as she was concerned were often the same individuals. The rest of
humanity binged on anxiety.

Out of the corner of her eye, she checked to see how Felicita was doing. The young Filipina help was
straightening out the damask tablecloth, smoothing down creases, busy as a bumblebee. In a matter of
hours, she would vacuum the rugs, polish the silver, shine the crystal, mop the floors, clean out the
guest bathroom, and just as the sun went down, set up the large, mahogany dining table. She would also
find time to walk the dog, a brown hound, a Hungarian Vizsla, named Danube. Thankfully, the food was
going to be catered, but still, it was a lot of work. Mrs Chorbadjian had several times offered to bring in
help, but Felicita insisted she could do it all by herself, now that the bruises on her arms had mostly
healed and the nasty swelling around her left eye had begun to subside. This morning she was even
humming as she dusted the mantle above the fireplace. It was a light and breezy melody — not the kind
of tune you would expect from a woman who had been to hell and somehow managed to come back.

Had her husband been alive, Mrs Chorbadjian knew, he would have objected to her hiring Felicita. He
would be worried that after what she had been through the young woman might not be very stable —
stability being another favourite word of his. Now, let’s not make a rash decision. You wouldn’t want a
less-than-stable person in the house, darling, would you?

Mrs Chorbadjian had always been amazed by her husband’s confidence in the rightness of his opinions,
and especially, his conviction that a good education (he himself had attended a top school that need not
be named), good money (he had inherited quite a bit and invested it wisely) and good family (caring,
well-educated parents, etc) would make one stable, and those who were deprived of similar beginnings
in life, through no fault of their own, were prone to instability and therefore could not be relied upon.
You should be kind to such people, kind and polite, but not mingle with them, and certainly not employ
them in the workplace — let alone bring them into the privacy of your house.

Not always an easy man, bless his soul. Yet Mrs Chorbadjian had loved her husband, and still did, as love
didn’t perish with a partner’s death. Overall theirs had been a happy marriage, but she knew from the
beginning that he just didn’t grasp certain things. For him, human misery was like smoking. If you didn’t
get anywhere near the bad habit, you wouldn’t have to worry about suffering its consequences. For her,
human misery was more like smoke itself. Diffuse, invisible and capable of permeating every nook and
cranny, it caught you unawares and even if you did your very best to shield yourself, you never knew
when you might inhale a lungful.

Mrs Chorbadjian was stirred out of her reverie by a clicking sound. When she turned aside, she saw
Felicita, having opened the display cabinet, about to dust an ornamental jug.

“Oh, stop! Be careful with that one,” Mrs Chorbadjian exclaimed, more harshly than she had intended.

Felicita flinched, caught by surprise.

“It’s an antique.” Mrs Chorbadjian immediately regretted saying that. Would the young woman even
know what “antique” meant?

As Felicita spoke very little English — and given that Mrs Chorbadjian had no Tagalog — they had been
communicating more through gestures than words ever since the maid had arrived just a week ago. But
this time Mrs Chorbadjian did not want to rely on the force of a frown alone. No, she was not going to
take the risk. Slowly, painstakingly, she rose from her seat and walked towards the cabinet, crammed
near to overflowing with scent bottles, silver spoons, gold-plated inkstands, bronze candlesticks, framed
photos of her sons at different stages of their transition from boyhood to manhood.

“This jug is old, my dear — even older than me. It was a set. A hundred and

forty-four pieces. Made in Vienna. Shipped from Istanbul to Smyrna in wooden crates. They belonged to
my great-grandmother. She was so beautiful! I never met her but I’ve seen her photos. Did you know I’m
named after her? Hermine Chorbadjian. When my husband proposed to me, I said to him, ‘I’ll come with
you to rainy London, I won’t object to you raising our children as British as the BBC, but you promise me
one thing. I’ll keep my family surname. I’m not changing that ever!’ And he agreed.”

Felicita blinked.

“My great-grandmother got married when she was only 16. Oh, I know, it’s terrible. But that’s how
things were done back then, don’t judge them harshly. Her dowry was magnificent — silk rugs, mother-
of-pearl chests, golden bracelets up to her elbows . . . And now there’s only this left.”

Mrs Chorbadjian turned the jug over to show the inscription underneath.

Royal Vienna, 1844.

Felicita’s eyes grew wide, but she still said nothing.

Mrs Chorbadjian pursed her lips, unsure whether she had been understood. She decided to try a
different tack. “This is worth £2,500.”

She was exaggerating — and quite a bit. The antiques dealer who had appraised the piece had said he
could sell it for about £1,000, but then again, could Mrs Chorbadjian trust a man who profited from
trading family heirlooms for a living? What did he know about this jug? How did one even put a price on
a historical object when every such item was a memory exhumed — someone’s unspoken joy,
someone’s inherited pain?

Meanwhile, Felicita was studying the jug, worth more than her monthly allowance. It was painted in a
green so vivid and rich that it brought to mind precious gemstones. In the centre was a dreamy-eyed
woman, combing her long, reddish-brown hair. She held a silver mirror, though she did not seem
interested in her reflection. Instead she was looking up and beyond the borders of her porcelain world,
looking straight at her observer from the future.

Mrs Chorbadjian hugged the children, patted the toddler on the head and kissed her daughter-in-law,
who she had always liked slightly less than her other daughter-in-law, about which she secretly felt
guilty. She noticed that Sarah’s blouse was crinkled and her collar was stained with what looked like
chocolate pudding. She must have dressed in a hurry.

Robert taught modern German history at a city university and wrote articles with drawn-out titles: “The
Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics in the Weimar Republic”; “When the Old World Vanishes,
but the New World is Yet to Emerge”; “The Building/Erasing of Memory and German National Identity”.

Sarah, though once an academic herself, was now a full-time mother. They lived in a listed house in
north London with a large garden dotted with children’s toys, climbing frames and trampolines, and in
one corner, a shed built for Robert to work. There he read, researched and typed furiously, warning the
world of the parallels between yesterday and today, while his wife took care of pretty much everything
else. Mrs Chorbadjian respected her son’s profession but could not understand why he didn’t get more
involved in housework while he philosophised on the state of the world. She also worried that lately, he
had been drinking more than usual.

“Sorry we are late,” said Sarah.

She had a tendency to apologise too much. But Mrs Chorbadjian knew if she ever told her this, she
would apologise for that as well.

“That’s all right. We have a table set next room for the kids.”
“Oh, good, I’ll take them there and settle them in front of the TV. Sorry, bad parenting, but tonight I
don’t mind that they watch rubbish for a while,” Sarah said and disappeared, dragging the children
along.

As soon as Mrs Chorbadjian was alone with her two sons, an awkward silence descended on the room.

“We brought you flowers,” said Robert, gesturing towards the bouquet.

“They are pretty.” Even as she said this, Mrs Chorbadjian was thinking that her middle son had probably
forgotten to get her a present. They must have stopped by a florist on the way here.

“So how is the new maid?” Robert said, crossing his legs.

“Oh, she’s wonderful.” Mrs Chorbadjian smiled.

“You know, Dad wouldn’t have approved,” said David, as he took an almond from a bowl and popped it
into his mouth.

“Your father is no longer with us.”

“Just saying, Mum . . . just saying.”

Mrs Chorbadjian glanced at the clock on the wall, wondering where her youngest son was.

Arman, the most daring one. When he was a student he had taken a gap year to go to Brazil. Wearing
khakis and trainers, changing his hair style and colour every few weeks as if he desperately needed to
find himself. Or possibly to erase himself altogether. On graduating he had joined a group of dropouts —
for that’s what they looked like — set on travelling the Silk Road by motorbike. He had cut the journey
short, never explaining why. Then he was gone again, this time to France to do base jumping. Arman had
then taken up white-water rafting, but on his second try, broken a wrist, which had put an end to his
adventures for the time being.
For all this and more, Mrs Chorbadjian blamed herself. Maybe it was because Arman was born
premature, kept at the hospital in an incubator for nine weeks. Maybe it was because at his most
vulnerable he had stayed in a cold, isolated space, a plastic tag around his wrist (the one he broke while
rafting). Recklessness was his way of connecting with the world, as though he was still trying to break
free from that lonely incubator, still longed to escape the invisible walls around.

Last year, Arman had announced that he was going to be a writer.

“I have a novel in me, Mum.”

Mrs Chorbadjian was happy to hear that. Surely literature could not be as dangerous as parachute
jumping from cliffs. She had also secretly hoped he would write about their family, for that was a story
that needed to be told. But it soon had become clear that Arman had other plans.

“What interests me the most is climatopia. Pretty exciting stuff. Dark, depressing.”

Seeing her draw a blank, he had added, “I want to write about the future of our planet.”

“That’s great,” Mrs Chorbadjian had said with an encouraging smile. “Write about the future, but first,
about the past.”

“Yeah, well, I can do that anytime.”

“Sure, love.”

What Mrs Chorbadjian had really meant was, “learn about our family, our history, all that we have lost
along the way. Do that, before I, too, die and there is no one left to tell.”

© David McConochie
It was past eight o’clock by the time Arman arrived. A different Arman — hair shaved on the sides and
nape, dyed blond on top. Mrs Chorbadjian was so surprised to see her son’s new hairstyle that she did
not notice that he had brought a guest with him.

“Mum, meet Nassim.”

Only then did she see the young man standing by the door. Large brown eyes, angular features,
strikingly handsome.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were bringing a friend.’’ Realising that hadn’t come out right, she added,
“Welcome, welcome!”

Nassim shook the hand the old woman offered him — a gentle but firm handshake. “Thank you, I’ve
heard so much about you.”

“You did?”

“Arman always talks about you.”

Always. Did that mean this stranger and her son were old friends — or maybe more than that? Mrs
Chorbadjian was suddenly grateful that her husband was not here tonight. She took a deep breath,
releasing it slowly. Her youngest son had dated women, too many for her taste, but never anyone of his
own sex, as far as she knew. Was it possible that all this time he had also had boyfriends — who were
kept hidden from her?

“We brought you a book,” Arman said, handing her a loosely wrapped package. The Broken Wings by
Kahlil Gibran.

“Nassim adores this, Mum. It’s his present to you.”

“Well, that’s very kind, thank you.”

She had just received a gift from a stranger, which was lovely. But where was her own son’s gift, she
wondered. Not even flowers?

Sarah walked back into the room in a flurry and grabbed the canvas bag she had dropped earlier — full
of diapers, milk bottles, hand sanitisers and a whole box of Cheerios. “Sorry everyone, don’t mind me.
I’ve got to put the little one to sleep, she’s a bit grizzly. Please don’t wait for me, start eating. I’ll join you
as soon as I can.”

“But . . . do you need help?” asked Mrs Chorbadjian.

“I’m good,” Sarah replied as she shot a glance at her husband. Busy filling himself a glass of whisky,
Robert did not seem to notice.

“So, shall we sit down?” David piped up. “I’m starving!”

© David McConochie

The large, mahogany table was exquisitely set. Glistening china, glowing candles. A heavy silver ladle in
her hand, Felicita served the first course: carrot ginger soup with crispy leeks.

“Tell us Nassim, what do you do?” Mrs Chorbadjian asked with a smile as she held out the bread basket
for him.

It was Arman who rushed to answer. “Nassim is a human-rights activist, Mum. He works with refugee
survivors of torture and trauma.”

“Oh!” Mrs Chorbadjian, though still smiling, seemed lost for words. She realised, with some
apprehension, that she couldn’t make small talk with someone who devoted his life to healing other
people’s wounds.

Nassim took a slice of sourdough and passed the bread basket to Robert, sitting next to him. “I was
based in Cairo for the last three years but we pretty much cover the entire region. Now we are moving
our headquarters to London so that we can co-ordinate across the whole Middle East more effectively.
There’s so much work to do, we can’t keep up.”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” said David. “It’s a huge mess, the Middle East. Beyond repair, if you ask my
honest opinion. But you can’t say that aloud these days, it’s not politically correct. I hope you don’t mind
me being blunt.”

Nassim was silent — if only for a few seconds. “It’s a mess perhaps, but not without a reason.”

“Lots of reasons.” David dipped a chunk of bread in his soup. “Religion to begin with — culture,
traditions. Even the weather. None of that helps.”

“Colonialism to begin with,” said Nassim. “Decades of economic exploitation, political corruption — not
to mention all those dictators and their western backers.”

Uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading, Mrs Chorbadjian turned to Nassim, “And do
you have a big family, dear?”

“Yes, I do. Many in the US. Cousins and uncles in Dearborn, an aunt in Ohio. Others in Tunisia, Jordan,
Syria . . . We have been scattered across the world.”

Mrs Chorbadjian nodded. Now that, she could relate to. “Not easy. You know what they say: The stones
of my native country are warmer than the ovens of Babylon.”

“Maybe that’s a bad thing,” said Arman. “I mean, warmer than the ovens of Babylon. It doesn’t sound
that appealing to me. Maybe it means you need to escape your native land — fast!”

“I don’t think that’s what your mother meant,” said Nassim, as he placed a gentle hand on Arman’s
shoulder and squeezed. Something passed between them, a silent, loving exchange.

Mrs Chorbadjian realised, with some apprehension, that she couldn’t make small talk with someone
who devoted his life to healing other people’s wounds
Robert took a swig of whisky and chuckled to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Arman asked.

“Nothing to do with you two, silly,” Robert said. “I heard something this afternoon. Something we all
should have been informed about but we weren’t, apparently, and now the whole world knows, and it’s
not even funny.”

Mrs Chorbadjian dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “Why are you talking in riddles?”

“Well . . . Why don’t you ask David what he’s busy doing these days?”

David winced, as though someone had kicked him under the table. “Oh I see, that’s what this is about.
So you’ve heard the news, congratulations. I was planning to announce it tonight. It was going to be a
surprise but of course, you couldn’t wait. You had to spoil it.”

“What’s going on?” Mrs Chorbadjian rasped.

Robert downed his glass, signalling at Felicita to renew it. “‘Spoil’, he says, ‘surprise’, he says. You can’t
spoil what’s already rotten.”

“Boys!”

David bit into the last of his bread and swallowed it without chewing. “Fine. Everyone, I’ve news to
share. I wanted to tell this earlier in the week but it wasn’t possible. I’m going into politics.”

“You what?” Mrs Chorbadjian crossed her arms, as though suddenly cold.

“Mum, I know this is sort of unexpected but the world is changing. People like me, people like us, in my
opinion, cannot stay in our comfort zones. I feel a sense of responsibility. I believe I can make a
difference. We need a healthy reset — and for that, we need to shake things up.”
“So which party is it?” asked Mrs Chorbadjian.

David straightened his shoulders. “POGOM.”

“POGOM?!” It was Nassim who exclaimed.

“What . . . is that?” said Mrs Chorbadjian, the lines in her forehead deepening further.

It sounded frighteningly strange to her ears, this acronym that had just been dropped into their lives.
Her husband had been an ardent Tory whereas she had always supported Labour, if more quietly. Back
then things were more simple, easier to grasp. Nowadays she couldn’t tell any more who was who.
Finally this year she had stopped following the news altogether. What was the point when all it did was
to add to her confusion?

“It’s a new political party, Mum,” David explained.

“Party of the Glorious Old Motherland,” said Arman, drumming his fingers on the table. “It was founded
two months ago. Ambitious, aggressive, angry.”

“And unashamedly far-right,” said Robert into his whisky glass.

David shook his head. “Nonsense. That’s what you’d think if you only follow certain media.”

Felicita walked in, carrying the main course on a huge silver platter. She was so impressed by the sight of
the dish that she couldn’t help announcing in a loud and sunny voice, “Lamb! Potatoes! Rice!”

A delicious, spicy aroma wafted through the room and, like a mischievous fairy with a feather, tickled
their noses one by one.

“The system is broken,” said David. “I think we’d all agree on that. People are sick of vague promises
that get them nowhere. They are tired of politics as usual — the establishment. They want something
new, exciting. Not next year, or in three years’ time, but right now. Travel the country . . . ”
“What do you know about the rest of this country?” Robert interjected. “I saw the Christmas hampers
you received from your clients — foie gras, truffles, champagne, Armagnac, Beluga caviar . . . Since when
did you become a man of the people?”

Arching her thin eyebrows, Mrs Chorbadjian leaned forward. “Robert dear, where is your wife? Maybe
you should go and check on her.”

“In a minute,” Robert said, without tearing his gaze from his older brother.

“At least I care,” said David. “This year I’ve been racking my brain, asking myself what can I do to help
the country I love.”

Mrs Chorbadjian asked quietly, “And what does your wife think about you going into politics?”

“Ex-wife,” corrected David. “Gabriela doesn’t like it, if you must know — which doesn’t change anything
as we have already gone our separate ways.”

Mrs Chorbadjian grew pensive. It dawned on her that her son’s divorce might not have been because of
another woman, a salacious love triangle. This was a political divorce, if there ever was such a thing. Her
son and her daughter-in-law had split up over politics! And the perfume that she received had probably
been chosen by a campaign assistant, maybe a grad student working for this new party.

By now Felicita, having served the rest of the table the main course, had appeared next to Arman.

“Only rice and potatoes,” Arman said. “I don’t eat meat.”

Mrs Chorbadjian stared at her youngest son.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you, Mum. I quit last month, couldn’t agree to butchering animals while
working on a climate book.”
“What else haven’t you told me about yourself,” Mrs Chorbadjian wanted to ask but couldn’t. Instead
she said, “I wish I knew. We could have prepared fish.”

“I don’t eat fish either. Don’t worry about me. Rice and potatoes will be more than enough.”

Sarah returned to the room just then, pulled herself a chair. “So sorry. Did I miss much? What were you
talking about?”

In front of her waiting were her soup, her salad, her main course.

“Nothing much,” said Robert. “I just learned that my younger brother has turned vegan — and my older
brother has turned fascist. This calls for a celebration.”

“Robert, behave!” said Mrs Chorbadjian.

David shrugged. “Let him spew nonsense, Mum. He’s completely cut off from reality. That’s what
happens when you spend entire days in a shed, drinking.”

Robert rolled his eyes, Sarah studied her napkin.

Rhetoric: the art of hitting without touching, saying without meaning, scolding without showing any
signs of negative feelings, let alone anger, hate or hostility. Oh how she had admired that British
calmness once

“This is the problem with you lot,” said David. “You use the word fascist like an Oyster card, hoping it
will get you somewhere. We talk about safety, you call us xenophobe. We talk about crime rates, you
call us racist. We talk about family values, you call us sexist. I couldn’t give a fig about your labels!”

“David, behave!” said Mrs Chorbadjian.

They lapsed into silence, interrupted only by the sound of Sarah’s cutlery, metal clashing with porcelain.
Arman sat back, his leg restlessly bouncing up and down underneath the table. “Maybe I should write a
dystopia instead of a climatopia. A new world: Immigrants have to wear ankle bracelets in Paris,
electronic monitoring devices are planted into dissidents’ skins in Edinburgh and there are surveillance
cameras everywhere in Geneva — ”

“If POGOM wins the next elections, I’m pretty sure we’ll get there fast,” said Robert.

David’s face darkened. “Did you even read our programme? Because if you had you’d know that we are
not anti-immigration. Far from it. We want the best and the brightest.”

“Do you think I’ll make the cut?” Nassim asked.

He had meant it as a joke but no one laughed. Answering that question in the affirmative felt just as
awkward as answering it in the negative, and so the silence stretched while everyone waited for
someone else to say something, find the right words to help the conversation move on.

Suddenly, Sarah, who had been eating too fast either to catch up with everyone else or to forget them
altogether, coughed, struggling for breath. Her face turned an ominous red as she bent over with a
rasping sound.

“Oh dear, she’s choking!” Mrs Chorbadjian yelled in panic.

Robert ran to his wife’s help, and began patting her on the back. David, who had better first aid skills,
jumped to his feet. “Hit between the shoulder blades!”

Since they didn’t — couldn’t — allow the other to be the saviour, they were now both patting on Sarah’s
back, their hands at first clashing, then inevitably working in tandem. Meanwhile, Arman had darted to
the kitchen to bring water, even though there was some on the table.

When she managed to save herself from all the slaps Sarah coughed one last time. “Stop!”
Arman dashed back into the room with a jug full of water. Mrs Chorbadjian’s heart skipped a beat when
she saw her beloved antique in her youngest — and most careless — son’s hands. But this was not the
right moment to talk about a material object and she didn’t.

“You all right?” the old woman asked her daughter-in-law.

“I’m fine. Sorry to scare you, Hermine,” said Sarah, wiping her eyes, which had teared up.

“Grandma, is Mummy OK?’

A child’s voice rose from behind, as free and unconstrained as wind chimes. Everyone turned their heads
and saw the boy standing by the door, one hand on his hip, one hand resting on the dog’s head. How
long had he been there, watching the adults bicker and fight, drink and sulk, panic and pat?

“George, sweetheart,” Mrs Chorbadjian cooed. “Come here, honey.”

The boy dutifully did as told. Danube followed, wagging his tail.

“Grandma . . . why are we not eating with you?”

“Oh, I thought you kids might like to have your own space and watch TV without having to listen to
boring adult talk.”

“But I’m bored. The girls are watching Friends — again. They have seen every episode 20 times already.”

“Have they now?” Mrs Chorbadjian dropped her voice to a conspiratorial tone.

“You need to get another TV.”

“If you say so, dear.”

George settled on his mother’s lap, making it clear that he was not going back to the other room.

“Madam?”

Only now finding her voice Mrs Chorbadjian said, “It’s all right, dear. Don’t worry. You must be tired. Go
to bed, please.”

Slowly, the old woman turned her back and walked towards the bedroom where she slept alone since
her husband had gone. Every last ounce of energy drained out of her tired bones. Time slowed down. So
did her breathing. But she wouldn’t sleep. She needed to talk to the ghosts first, tell them all the things
she hadn’t been able to say out loud tonight, even though she knew, of course, they were not a very
talkative bunch.