David Szalay’s characters drift, indifferent and alone, caught in currents of seemingly trivial events that carry them further from comfortable shores. Encounters begin and end without resolution, connections form and dissolve in passing, and only in retrospect, if ever, do scars appear. ‘Are you happy that you’re alive?’ one character asks another in Turbulence (2018), Szalay’s short st ...
(read more)
