The Marks of Cain

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who helped in my Namibian research: especially the people at Canon Lodge, Namib Desert Lodge, Luderitz Nest, and Klein-aus-Vista. Extraordinary places all. The staff of EHRA, who showed me the stirring Damara landscapes of the Namibian desert elephants, were invaluably helpful.

Thanks are likewise due to Mark Kurlansky and Paddy Woodworth for their highly informative books on Basque culture, everyone in Zugarramurdi in Navarre, the scientists of Stanford University’s Human Diversity Genome Project (which closed, amidst controversy, in the 1990s), and the Dominican monks of the Priory of La Tourette.

My editors, Josh Kendall in New York, and Jane Johnson in London, have been patient, assiduous and insightful over many months: I am vastly grateful to them; I am similarly grateful to Eugenie Furniss, my agent at William Morris, and Jay Mandel at WME New York.

Finally, I want to thank Marie-Pierre Manet Beauzac, who allowed me into her house in Tarbes, in southern France, and revealed her remarkable ancestry.

This book is for Marie: the last of the Cagots.