Seven or eight years in the past, a good friend confirmed me a tatty packet of strange papers he’d picked up for six kilos at a sale. It appeared similar to it does on this image. Many of the papers are an English translation of a sixteenth-century letter written by a French Protestant. I nonetheless haven’t learn it. What obtained my consideration instantly was the remarkably pristine purple invitation to a flower present happening on July 27, 1891.

My thoughts crammed with delicate, sunshiney photographs of parasols, white attire, straw hats. The again of the invitation, nonetheless, contained one thing unexpectedly dramatic: somebody had copied out one other letter in a tiny hand, titling it “Mrs. Jacques’s account of the disaster that passed off at this flower present.” I learn it, and felt the shiver of an concept. My good friend gave me the packet to maintain, and I knew that at some point I might attempt to make one thing out of it. I obtained there ultimately, and the result’s my story “The Fête,” which seems within the new Summer time situation of The Paris Evaluation. The story is nearly completely fictional, since Mrs. Jacques doesn’t actually inform us very a lot, besides concerning the nature of the disaster—which is the one element I at all times meant to borrow. Maybe, in an effort to protect some suspense, you may prefer to learn my model first.

Tom Crewe’s first novel, The New Life, gained the Orwell Political Fiction Guide Prize. He’s a contributing editor of the London Evaluation of Books.