Letters from Elsewhere: Jenny Mazowski

My visitor today must be rather clever. Despite being a character in a novel, she knows about two other novels about to be released. I suspect a certain Olga Swan had a hand in this!

Here’s Jenny’s letter, dated 1986.

Monday

To:  Naomi Klein

From: Jenny Mazowski

Dear Naomi,

Haven’t heard from you in ages. So much to tell you.  You know I got that secretary job at my local university?  Well, it’s been mind blowing. I work for this terrible professor. His name’s Axel Sloan and I’d like to take an axe to him myself. He’s really anti-semitic. You’ll never believe this but last week he actually asked me whether circumcised men were better in bed?  Honestly!  I didn’t know where to put myself.  And then there’s a PhD student from Bangladesh in our department who alleges she was actually raped by him right in his office here!  I know.  She’s such a lovely girl, too. We get on really well together. I remember last Xmas when we giggled together over whether we should send each other a Xmas card or not, like the rest of the department. Well, we both agreed. Enough’s enough. We’re gonna make a formal complaint to the V-C against Prof. Sloan. Trouble is I don’t like the V-C either. There’s something about the way he looks at the male students that’s a bit odd. Anyway I’ll let you know what happens.

So, what about you? Has your cousin started writing that story about the Klein family history yet? I guess it’ll take a long time to write. Wasn’t there someone called David Klein in your family who got involved in Nazi Germany during the war? And, didn’t he even parachute in to Vichy France too? Wow!  Hope the story doesn’t take too long to finish as I’d really love to find out what happened. Sounds amazing. Let’s hope your cousin finds one of those lovely boutique publishing houses that are springing up everywhere now. I’m sure they’d jump at the chance to publish it. What was the title again? Lamplight! Yes, that’s it. Gives a real war-time feel to it. Maybe the Vichy bit should be a second novel. A good title for that one would be Vichyssoise – you know, like the chilled, green soup they have in France. Can’t wait to read them.

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Must dash. Prof. Sloan is back any minute from lunch and I haven’t finished his grant application yet. If not, there’ll be 3^rd Degree Murder for sure!

Love,

Jenny x

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3^rd Degree Murder, a university intrigue by Olga Swan, is available here.

Lamplight – Book 1 in the David Klein war reporter series – is due to be released in February 2016.

Vichyssoise – Book 2 in the David Klein series – is due to be released in May 2016.

Read Olga Swan’s weekly, Sunday blog about life as an expat in France.