The Prophet and the Barbarians

Sam Kriss, as is well known, lives on top of a mountain in a little hut. It is cold on the mountain. Sometimes, when the sun is shining, he ventures out to the moss-sprung slopes to pick mushrooms, but most of the time he just sits indoors, reading the Tarot, listening to the prophecies blown to him on the icy winds, the curtains of rain. He spends his evenings huddled by the fire, studying the works of the great heresiarchs: Basilides, Swedenborg, Clung. Only occasionally does he venture down into the valleys to meet the toothless hordes, usually when there has been another Taylor Swift concert or another presidential election. He makes these journeys not because he likes them — Kriss lives in England and the English treat all literate people like witches, let alone those who live on top of mountains and predict the future — but because it is his duty. The people must be guided, shepherded. And Sam Kriss has a gift.