The process of buying a novel is a strange business. Once you've - obviously - judged a book to be interesting enough by its cover to merit plucking it from the shelf, the next hoop to jump through is the first page. Authors know this all too well - they may not be able to influence how their opus looks, but they can certainly entice readers into their story.
So some of those first lines have become the most famous in all literature. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice) is clearly a classic. Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities kicks off with the memorable: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." And "It was a dark and stormy night" has become more famous than the book from which it is taken: Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Victorian thriller Paul Clifford.
But why should the first page be so important? Surely the real test of a book is when the story is fully underway. The eminent English writer and critic Ford Madox Ford certainly thought so: in 1939 he remarked "open the book to page 99 and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you".
His words were barely picked up on at the time.
Ironically, it's the first line of his book, The Good Soldier - "This is the saddest story I have ever heard" - which he's most famous for. It's regularly cited as one of the greatest in 20th-century literature.
But more than 70 years later, Madox Ford's words have well and truly hit the blogosphere. A trio of self-styled "readers, writers and web geeks" are launching a website this month - www.page99test.com - where published and unpublished writers upload their page 99s. Readers then click through to answer just two questions: would they turn the page, and would they buy the book? After they've written this mini-review of sorts, the name of the author and book - until this point anonymous - is revealed.
It's an intriguing idea. After all, good writers should give just as much importance to the construction of their sentences on page 99 as they do on page one. The plot of a good book should be just as interesting - in fact more interesting - part way through as it is at the start. After all, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four starts with the memorable "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen". But it's just as captivating on page 99: "Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect."
So are the contents of page 99s a good test of a book's qualities in the modern era too? A quick flick through my bookshelves suggests so. Haruki Murakami's wonderfully wry Norwegian Wood has the memorable exchange: "I was always hungry for love. I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally. I was still in primary school at the time." The crux of Chuck Palahniuk's dual identity story of insomnia, Fight Club, is in the line on page 99: "All night long you're thinking am I asleep? Have I slept?" But it's not a watertight theory. "Do you think we can risk the Extendable Ears?" is the offering of JK Rowling in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Of course, the test only really works with books you haven't yet read. Turning to the one currently on top of my (and, it seems, everybody's) to-read pile, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, it's striking how enlightening page 99 seems to be. Patty is unsubtly seducing Walter, although she appears to have a dodgy knee. They go back to his apartment whereupon the mood is somewhat cooled by Walter's college friend (we know this from the jacket notes) playing guitar and watching a war movie. Everything about Franzen - the dry humour, his take on contemporary love, the mini-tragedies that pepper everyday life - is revealed on this page. It took all my powers of self-discipline not to turn to page 100 and see what happened next. But I can't wait to find out.
Joanna Wiebe, one of the co-founders of www.page99test.com, thinks if a book is fantastic, then page 99 is always great. "But in that case, so is page 13, 155 and 224," she admits. "But page 99 is interesting because the concept is just plain and simple. Unlike the opening line, the whole first chapter and the ending, page 99 is just buried somewhere in the middle, where the writer and editor may not have dedicated a lot of time to it. So if that page captures your attention, you can assume that the whole book will. I've made it through maybe a third of all the books on my bookshelves. It's not for lack of trying. It's just that a lot of books lose my attention after the first chapter or two."
Still, attaching too much significance to page 99 does have a slight problem - different fonts and book sizes mean a page 99 in one edition might be page 112 in another. Isn't that an inherent flaw in Wiebe's whole idea?
"Actually, we think it's perfect," she says. "It means you can't refine that page for the purposes of 'tricking' this test. Obviously, the purpose is not to test the quality of page 99 itself - there's no point getting hung up on the actual page - but to sample the quality of the book. It's actually better if page 99 is different in different editions."
So perhaps a by-product of www.page99test.com might be that it encourages authors to think more carefully about the part of the book so often neglected by editors and writers. Philip Larkin memorably said that much modern fiction is a "beginning, a muddle and an end" - and it's a state of affairs that rings true for Wiebe, too.
"I love that quote," she says. "But are we trying to encourage more rounded books? Hmm. It's hard to be a writer, but we do think that writers who want to sell a lot of books to a target audience could benefit from refining the middle sections of their books to better please their readers. That is, if you're writing to sell, then do as Elmore Leonard said and skip the parts your readers skip. How do you know what readers skip? Upload your chapter(s) to our site and let them tell you..."
In the future, www.page99test.com hopes to publish full chapters, forwarding reader feedback to budding writers to help them in the minefield which is the publishing process. Wiebe is also working to build partnerships with Kindle, Nook and Apple to ensure writers who self-publish ebooks will be able to use their feedback to market themselves - much like a "readers choice" sticker on a book can help it get attention in a book store.
But in the meantime, it seems only fair to ask Wiebe to name her favourite page 99s.
"I should probably say page 99 of The Good Soldier, shouldn't I?" she laughs. "But perhaps my favourite is page 99 in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, because it takes place at exactly the moment Waverly has started winning chess championships and the community is rallying around her. It's so well-written, exciting and stimulating."
Which, after all, is all you can ask of any book, on page 99 or not.
Biography
Her family: She has four sons, aged 29, 27, 25 and 24 and is a grandmother-of-nine
Favourite book: Flashes of Thought by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid
Favourite drink: Water
Her hobbies: Reading and volunteer work
Favourite music: Classical music
Her motto: I don't wait, I initiate
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
FIGHT CARD
1. Featherweight 66kg
Ben Lucas (AUS) v Ibrahim Kendil (EGY)
2. Lightweight 70kg
Mohammed Kareem Aljnan (SYR) v Alphonse Besala (CMR)
3. Welterweight 77kg
Marcos Costa (BRA) v Abdelhakim Wahid (MAR)
4. Lightweight 70kg
Omar Ramadan (EGY) v Abdimitalipov Atabek (KGZ)
5. Featherweight 66kg
Ahmed Al Darmaki (UAE) v Kagimu Kigga (UGA)
6. Catchweight 85kg
Ibrahim El Sawi (EGY) v Iuri Fraga (BRA)
7. Featherweight 66kg
Yousef Al Husani (UAE) v Mohamed Allam (EGY)
8. Catchweight 73kg
Mostafa Radi (PAL) v Abdipatta Abdizhali (KGZ)
9. Featherweight 66kg
Jaures Dea (CMR) v Andre Pinheiro (BRA)
10. Catchweight 90kg
Tarek Suleiman (SYR) v Juscelino Ferreira (BRA)
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
Company: Instabug
Founded: 2013
Based: Egypt, Cairo
Sector: IT
Employees: 100
Stage: Series A
Investors: Flat6Labs, Accel, Y Combinator and angel investors
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
The specs
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 502hp at 7,600rpm
Torque: 637Nm at 5,150rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto
Price: from Dh317,671
On sale: now
PROFILE OF SWVL
Started: April 2017
Founders: Mostafa Kandil, Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport
Size: 450 employees
Investment: approximately $80 million
Investors include: Dubai’s Beco Capital, US’s Endeavor Catalyst, China’s MSA, Egypt’s Sawari Ventures, Sweden’s Vostok New Ventures, Property Finder CEO Michael Lahyani
Company%20Profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Neo%20Mobility%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20February%202023%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECo-founders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Abhishek%20Shah%20and%20Anish%20Garg%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Logistics%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410%20million%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Delta%20Corp%2C%20Pyse%20Sustainability%20Fund%2C%20angel%20investors%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
One in nine do not have enough to eat
Created in 1961, the World Food Programme is pledged to fight hunger worldwide as well as providing emergency food assistance in a crisis.
One of the organisation’s goals is the Zero Hunger Pledge, adopted by the international community in 2015 as one of the 17 Sustainable Goals for Sustainable Development, to end world hunger by 2030.
The WFP, a branch of the United Nations, is funded by voluntary donations from governments, businesses and private donations.
Almost two thirds of its operations currently take place in conflict zones, where it is calculated that people are more than three times likely to suffer from malnutrition than in peaceful countries.
It is currently estimated that one in nine people globally do not have enough to eat.
On any one day, the WFP estimates that it has 5,000 lorries, 20 ships and 70 aircraft on the move.
Outside emergencies, the WFP provides school meals to up to 25 million children in 63 countries, while working with communities to improve nutrition. Where possible, it buys supplies from developing countries to cut down transport cost and boost local economies.
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
The specs: Macan Turbo
Engine: Dual synchronous electric motors
Power: 639hp
Torque: 1,130Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Touring range: 591km
Price: From Dh412,500
On sale: Deliveries start in October
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EYango%20Deli%20Tech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EUAE%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELaunch%20year%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ERetail%20SaaS%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESelf%20funded%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
How tumultuous protests grew
- A fuel tax protest by French drivers appealed to wider anti-government sentiment
- Unlike previous French demonstrations there was no trade union or organised movement involved
- Demonstrators responded to online petitions and flooded squares to block traffic
- At its height there were almost 300,000 on the streets in support
- Named after the high visibility jackets that drivers must keep in cars
- Clashes soon turned violent as thousands fought with police at cordons
- An estimated two dozen people lost eyes and many others were admitted to hospital