AustLit

'In La Paz, I live with an old couple who do not know my name. They are both losing their grip on the order of things, you can tell from the look of distant confusion that flits across their faces when they ask me, for the umpteenth time, ¿tu nombre? To get to my room at the top of their house I have to climb several flights of stairs, and the thin air leaves me gasping for breath. It’s unsettling to stand on the landing with your head spinning, vision blacking in and out, and then to hear a thin wavering voice float up from below: ¿tu nombre? No matter how many times I tell them my name, the question repeats itself, sending a cold electric jolt up my spine: has there been a mistake? Am I allowed to be here? But I have always known myself as an imposter, skirting the edges of an eventual exposure. For years the moment arrived in a recurring dream: I stood at a conference podium reading my thesis to an audience that appeared not to hear me. Even my supervisor’s face was blank. What are you doing here? Your name? Coming now from the bottom of the stairs, the question prods at the raw, flickering heart of my old fear. As if the reckoning I waited for has arrived to meet me in La Paz, Bolivia: the highest city in the world.'  (Introduction)