Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.

In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.

Are we savages or what?

Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.

Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.