Some authors we admired. Archer we stayed up for — hostel lights out, torch under the blanket, one more chapter, and it's already 3am.
Two boys born the same day on opposite sides of the world, growing into a rivalry that felt like ours. A revenge plot run as pure arithmetic. And those short stories where the final line reached back and rearranged everything we had just read.
The literary prizes went elsewhere, and that was never the game he was playing.
He wrote to keep us turning the page, and in a hostel room at 3am that is the only review that counts.
He never wrote to be admired. He wrote to keep us turning the page.