The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met. From the variety of their comportment and dress-frock coats, tailcoats, Norfolk jackets with buttons of horn, yellow moleskin, cambric and twill-they might have been twelve strangers on a railway car, each bound for a separate quarter of a city that possessed fog and tides enough divide them...."

Begitulah Eleanor Catton memulai nove