The Gone-Away World

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Authoring may be solitary, but this author at least cannot function in a vacuum. The first person I must thank, now and ever, is Clare. I started this book in January 2006 while we were planning our wedding; the deal was done in 2007 on the day we moved house—which meant that Clare moved house and I went to meetings where everyone was nice to me. Without her keen eye and her laughter, this book would make less sense and be less funny and I would be a very lonely fellow.

I have, as is customary, borrowed from (read “pillaged”) every story I have ever loved to write my own, but I must bow especially to P. G. Wodehouse, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and to Alexandre Dumas. It’s not what they did, but how they did it.

In the forest of the booktrade, I am guided by the inestimable Patrick Walsh, without whom I would be eaten by bears. Jason Arthur at William Heinemann and Edward Kastenmeier at Knopf rein in my more incomprehensible moments and gently but firmly insist that I get the thing done right. All those involved in designing, setting, presenting and selling the book have pushed the boat out in wonderful and bizarre ways, which makes the whole thing even more exciting than it already is.

Over the years, I have received from my parents—by osmosis, as it were—a master class in writing and surviving the novel; this in addition to the whole business of how to be a person.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Title Hunt. Good titles are rarer than snarks and twice as slippery as Gussie Fink-Nottle’s newts.

Lastly, I have stolen bits and pieces of real people to make my characters, and I have put them together to work the action without thought for where they came from. There simply is not one portrait of a real person in this book—although, if you look carefully, you may find your own nose above someone else’s moustache. To all those anonymous donors, thank you.

Well, now. On to the next one.

Nick Harkaway

London, 2008