Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and my guest is Michael Ondacha.

Michael Ondacha's new novel, Warlight, is published by Knapp, as his many recent

books have been. But you'll pardon me. I absolutely think it's a great book, a magnificent

book, an entertaining book, a moving book, an involving book, a wonderful

book. That sounds like high praise, because I mean it to be. Now, where in the world did this

start? It's one of those books where I'm not quite sure where it started.

You know, I mean, most of the other books I can say as an English patient began with a

conversation between a nurse and a patient in a bed.

But there was no real moment that kind of made me think of this whole thing.

I just began with, perhaps with that first

sentence. It's a glorious first sentence. Will you read it to us, please? Yeah. It's a first

sentence that makes you want to read or write an entire book. Well, that's what happened to me

is in 1945, our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.

Yes.

...