Adam 40

Madeleine, Dead Horse Point

We are at Adam's 40th birthday party last night in Notting Hill, which really is a lovely part of west London - in the 1980s it was run down and my friend Gilbert bought a house here for half a mil which is now worth maybe 20. Or 25. But I digress. 

Adam I met at Ben's bar mitzvah when he (Adam) had recently acquired Pushkin Press which publishes authors from around the world like Stefan Zweig, Marcel Ayme, Antal Szerb, Paul Moran and Yasushi Inoue (none of whom I have read dear reader). Often Adam translates these works into the English language for the first time. 

Before Pushkin, Adam was Publisher of Penguin Classics and best known perhaps for rediscovering the work of the German writer Hans Fallada, with the first English-language publication of Alone in Berlin. He is now excited about 'Fortune of France,' which chronicles over many fictional volumes the French religious wars in the age of the Tudors; it has sold more than five million copies but not in English. I immediately think of the Master And Commander series and may have to investigate.

For the record: Eitan is 5'7'' and Madeleine is 5'3''. I once took their height and weight every month or so up until 2010. I will plot it on a graph one day.