Gabriel Josipovici arrived in Oxford to be interviewed for a place to study English – the most un-English of students, Jewish, twice-displaced, already passionate about the great European writers: “They kept asking me what English novelist I most admired and I kept saying ‘Dostoevsky’, and they kept saying, ‘English novelist, Mr Josipovici’, and I kept saying ‘Dostoevsky’, vaguely aware that something was profoundly wrong but unable, in the heat of the moment, to put my finger on it.”

— Gabriel Josipovici, (via here)