In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien.
It was a tall order to channel such literary genius, but on the whole you did it pretty well. Greene, with his immediately distinctive voice, was by far the most popular choice. As Nicholas Shakespeare wrote, ‘It rarely takes more than three …sentences to situate you in Greeneland, a place whose moral temperature would wring sweat out of a fridge.’
Kafka proved the most difficult nut to crack. None of you quite managed to capture his finely calibrated blend of the nightmarish and the mundane, though Bill Greenwell came closest, and Josh Ekroy nailed well his exhaustive sentence structures.
Sylvia Fairley, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, Sid Field, Trish Davis, Barry Baldwin and Katie Mallett deserve to be singled out for honourable mentions.
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