ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It goes without saying that only the company and fellowship, support and infinite patience, of those around me allowed Blake’s Therapy to ever make its solitary way into the world.

Let me name, therefore, the foremost culprits.

If this novel is dedicated, with thanks, to my eldest son, Rodrigo, who has so frequently collaborated with me on plays, scripts and films, it is because without his unflagging presence as I wrote there would have been no book. He not only helped me to imagine, from the very start, the different stages of Blake’s trajectory and treatment but also constantly enlightened my own parallel quest with observations and guidance. Later on it was my wife Angélica’s turn to come to my aid: As my first and best and most incisive reader, her frank advice and faultless critical faculties were, as usual, indispens able.

Dan Simon, my editor at Seven Stories, has proven to be an exceptional soulmate. He pushed me gently and respectfully to take another long and hard look at the manuscript, allowing me to deepen its humanity and explore the multiple implications of Blake’s choices. Not to mention some of Dan’s other penetrating editorial suggestions. I look forward to many years of working with him and his enthusiastic colleagues at the Press.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Tom Englehardt. He was my first editor in the English language when I started publishing at Pantheon almost twenty years ago and has since then remained steadfast in his friendship. His belief in my work and in this book in particular have been instrumental in its publication. In the cutthroat times that we live in, Tom’s altruism is almost unbelievable and always inspiring.

Thanks as well to Jin Auh, who represents me at the Wylie Agency and who steered Blake’s Therapy through its marathon course toward the light of day, invariably cheerful and encouraging. And then there is Hortensia Calvo, the Latin American Librarian at Duke University, who not only provided me with tons of material but also mentioned, very casually, as we searched for appropriate books and articles, a certain story about a town full of orchids in her native Colombia. And Raquel de la Concha in Madrid, my agent for the Spanish and Portuguese language, who suggested that I accept the offer by my Brazilian publisher, Roberto Feith, of Objetiva, that I write a short novel on this subject—which turned out to be the first incarnation of Blake’s Therapy. And Margaret Lawless, then my assistant, who guarded my time with fierceness. And I could go on and on: Joaquín and Melissa and Isabella and…

But I should not end these notes of appreciation without thanking my hosts at the World Economic Forum who invited me to Davos a few years ago. I journeyed as a Fellow Forum to that town in Switzerland where the business and political leaders of the world gather each February. The real, the secret reason for my voyage there was the chance being afforded me to observe, at close range, the community to which my protagonist—who was already buzzing around in my head—supposedly belongs, its trappings, its habits, its labyrinths. I had penetrated what seemed to me to be an alien culture, and I felt somewhat like an anthropologist intent on noting bizarre customs and rituals. Or maybe, I told myself, this is like a safari that some mad god of creation has sent me on, into a land inhabited by men of ordinary flesh and blood who wield extraordinary multinational power on a global scale in ways the world has never seen before. Fascinating as Davos was and influential as it must have been in how I finally set up the entrepreneurial landscape of this novel, I have to admit, nevertheless, that no matter how obsessively I searched, I was unsuccessful in discovering among my fellow participants a model for my Graham Blake.

I still think he must exist somewhere in the world. Somewhere near or far, someone just like Blake must be facing what I have made him face in my invented universe. And so finally, to conclude my acknowledgments, my puzzled thanks to Graham Blake: thank you, Mr. Blake—or should I call you Graham?—for coming to me like a muse in the global night and whispering your faraway and familiar voice in my ear as I wrote your story.

Your story and perhaps ours as well.