'In his preface to these collected writings, Dessaix describes them as ‘talks of mine from gala occasions, along with a few chatty but targeted pieces of journalism … [plus] a short story’; on the back cover, he is quoted as calling his journal articles ‘feuilletons’. Before I began to read the book, I looked up the translation of ‘feuilletons’ – ‘soap operas’ was the first definition I came across.' (Introduction)