I bought a new translation of The Karamazov Brothers to revisit the section on the Grand Inquisitor, but then I decided to reread the entire book. The last time I read it must have been long ago. Having finished reading late last night, I spent a while reflecting about Dostoevsky’s book before turning off the light. As I was reclining on pillows some way from the lamp, my mind wondered onto other things. I was pretty tired, too. Then I was surprised by several connected thoughts about my own book. The thoughts were sharp, clear, unyielding. One day, it came to me, I will need to start finishing my book. For that task, I will need solitude. I will need plenty of solitude. The only question is when that day will arrive. I got up and wrote this down. I was truly surprised by these thoughts, as well as by my compulsion to write them down, because I have long thought of my book as having neither a beginning nor an end. This I considered its special charm. Am I to embark onto a different plan for my work? After a pause, I thought of all the places where I have lived, where I have had an address, no matter how briefly: Zagreb, Belgrade, Sisak, Zagreb again, Cambridge, Ljubljana, Cambridge again, Reading, London, and Reading again. I got up one more time and wrote all these names down. Then I wrote down the names of my four “wives”: Darja, Elise, Lauren, and Anita. Puzzled, I smiled at myself. Are all these names supposed to help me structure my book? I was quite fascinated by all this. All my actions were almost automatic. They were certainly unreflected, unpremeditated. I waited a bit longer to see what else would come out of me, as it were, but nothing did. I turned off the light at last. I must have fallen asleep soon afterwards.