In William Thacker’s second novel, Lingua Franca, the narrator, Miles Platting, awakes from a shipwreck, buried under rubble. He is rescued and transported to a hospital, where everyone communicates in silence, through handwritten notes and sign language. When he asks for the whereabouts of his wife, Kendal, he is handed a pen and told to write down everything he remembers, and so he reveals how he reached this unlikely point.

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