SUMMER READING

Hoffmann stared at the tablecloth and let the discussion flow around him. He was remembering now why he didn't like the rich: their self-pity. Persecution was the common ground of their conversation, like sport or the weather was for everyone else. He despised them.

"I despise you," he said, but nobody paid him any attention, so engrossed were they in the inequities of higher-rate taxation and the inherent criminality of all employees.
'
--From Robert Harris's novel The Fear Index (London: Hutchinson, 2011; New York: Knopf, 2012)