Swing Time

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my early readers: Josh Appignanesi, Daniel Kehlmann, Tamsin Shaw, Michal Shavit, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Gemma Seiff, Darryl Pinckney, Ben Bailey-Smith, Yvonne Bailey-Smith and, in particular, Devorah Baum, for encouragement when it was most needed.

Special thanks to Nick Laird, who read first and saw what had to be done with time, just in time.

Thanks to my editors and agent: Simon Prosser, Ann Godoff and Georgia Garrett.

Thanks to Nick Parnes, Hannah Parnes and Brandy Jolliff, for reminding me what work was like in the nineties.

Thanks to Eleanor Wachtel, for introducing me to the matchless Jeni LeGon.

Thank you to Steven Barclay, for a little space in Paris when it was most needed.

I am indebted to Dr. Marloes Janson, whose engrossing, thoughtful and inspiring anthropological study Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: The Tablighi Jama‘at proved invaluable, bringing context where I had impressions, possible answers when I had questions, and providing many of the cultural underpinnings of this story, as well as helping create the feel and texture of certain scenes in the novel. A note on geography: North London, in these pages, is a state of mind. Some streets may not appear as they do in Google Maps.

Nick, Kit, Hal — love and gratitude.