‘Down with the Party!’ Soviet Malala punched the air.
‘Have you left your own movement?’ Jimfish asked.
‘It has left me,’ said Soviet Malala. ‘When I remind them that rage is the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat, what do they do? They tell me I need anger-management classes. Come and join us, Jimfish! Nothing is more important than saving the lumpenproletariat!’
‘That may be so,’ said Jimfish, ‘but I’d be happy if I could save the coelacanth.’
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including Kruger’s Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, My Mother’s Lovers and Shooting Angels, published by Atlantic Books in 2012 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright, and the author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running (1988).