London Fever

London Fever is narrated by Paul Lenkowicz, a young Argentine who recounts his childhood in Buenos Aires and his disastrous attempt to reinvent himself as an English intellectual. Paul announces immediately that he has always regarded deception as the surest route to pleasure, independence and social advancement. He traces this philosophy back to a childhood visit to Parque de la Costa. His father Saul lies about Paul’s age to obtain free admission, but Paul innocently reveals that he is ten rather than seven. Once they are inside, Saul beats him and forces him to recover the supposed price of the ticket by pretending to be a lost child and begging strangers for money. Paul proves so persuasive that he earns far more than the ticket would have cost and refuses to stop. When Saul tries to drag him away, Paul threatens to accuse him of being a child molester. By the end of the day, the child has outmanoeuvred the adult and earned enough to buy his parents dinner. Paul presents this as the birth of the personality that will govern the rest of his life: a liar, performer and opportunist convinced that the world is withholding things that rightfully belong to him.

Paul grows up in Flores as the only child of Susanna and Saul Lenkowicz. Susanna teaches Russian at the British School and occasionally works for the Russian Embassy, while Saul is officially a copyist in an accountant’s office but considers himself an inventor. His impractical inventions include a device that informs schoolchildren about international catastrophes and a mechanical circumciser built from a wheelchair. Both parents are loving in their own peculiar way, but their household normalises dishonesty, humiliation and emotional avoidance. Saul turns almost every family interaction into a contest, while Susanna expresses affection through financial sacrifice and anxious supervision.

Paul’s maternal grandfather Abel is the most important figure in his childhood. A Polish-born Jewish widower, Abel spends his retirement studying whatever subject happens to interest him: chess, Schopenhauer, Beethoven, Argentine Jewish inventors or gaucho poetry. Paul accompanies him to pharmacies, banks and card games with his elderly friends, absorbing Abel’s appetite for knowledge and his scepticism about respectable institutions. Abel rarely communicates affection directly, but he treats Paul as a companion rather than a helpless child.