Contents Preface

I. Inklings On the Good Life

What Leisure Really Means First Fruit

Botanising in the Garden of Eden On the Surface of Events

Rereading the Book of Jonah Green, Red and Blue

The World in 1572 Grace and Violence

Anecdotes from the Napoleonic Era Balzac et Cie

The Novel after Balzac A Critical Romance

Dostoevsky as a Literary Character

II. Happenstances Picking Olives

A Working Week in Apulia

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