"Perhaps there are multiple forgeries in circulation, but I cannot obtain any of those, either. If I suggest to the publisher that they might wish to reprint, they will agree that it would be a very good idea, what with demand being so high, but nothing will come of it. These books exist, one sometimes thinks, only in the rumour and desire they excite. And in some cases, that does indeed turn out to be the case. There is a book by a South American author that is endlessly listed on rare edition inventories, but I know for a fact that it was never made available in the first place. The publisher commissioned it, the author wrote it, but there was an irretrievable breakdown in their relationship and he refused to deliver and burned the manuscript. It is in all the catalogues for that year—they were printed in advance, of course—but it cannot be had. Warehouses listed it knowing they would receive it, and do not list it as sold out because they’ve never actually despatched a single copy. Where there should be text on paper, there is none, only the whisper of it in our accounting, the spectre of a story that was never actually shown to anyone. Thus: a ghost book."