Cirrus@Austlit

'I had stopped writing apocalyptic fictions. They had begun to seem passé. How many end of the world scenarios could you produce? But that summer we went to Mont St Michel. There were warning signs about the quicksands in the bay, but our feet sank into the melted tar of the car park, it was so hot. We had come from Rabelais’s birthplace and the heat in the Loire valley had reduced that small stone home to silence. There were illustrations in the display case of Gargantua pissing, but outside our sweat evaporated before it even reached the surface of our skin. We slaked our thirst on supermarket wines, with that ineffable flavour imparted by the petrochemical refineries and cellulose plants along the Rhône valley.' (Introduction)