What actually happened was that far from them absorbing my normality, I ended up absorbing their madness...

Six illustrated essays that unlock the origin of some of the material that went into One Green Bottle. Why was the killer’s first victim obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte? Why did Magali claim to be a psychotherapist? Where, indeed, did Magali herself come from? Irreverent and humorous, but also instructive, the essays combine research and reflections with anecdotes from my own life. If, as Flaubert wrote, ‘a book is a constant fusion of illusion and reality’, here is a glimpse of some of the reality that lies behind the illusion.