It was Paul Kelly who led me to read Raymond Carver. It was the early 90s, and my head had been stuck in a magic realist place for a while. I’d read loads of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the 80s and wanted to be him, right up until I read Jorge Luis Borges. And wanted to be him. I chased after them with less chance of catching them than a three-legged dog on a freeway going after cars. For me, the 80s was mostly a view of their taillights fading into the distance. And, okay, also Kafka’s.

Then I read Peter Carey’s The Fat Man in History and tried to be him too. That attempt even got published. My mother purchased several hundred copies before it slipped from view. The most memorable review quote for Passion went like this: ‘Nick Earls’s publishers claim he is a rising star in Australian fiction. That claim is to be flatly contradicted … Often we say too many books are published. Rarely are we prepared to name the books. Passion would be on my list.’