When I first moved to Spain to live with my husband after we were married, we moved to a small city in Valencian Country, slightly inland and south of Valencia city, called Alzira. This was where my husband worked in a publishing house and everything was brand new and exciting.

I would listen to the sounds around me, the unusual sights, smells, language and culture and just soak it all up. We lived in a little flat in the centre of the city and I’d watch the swifts and swallows race along our streets and often hear the knife sharpener’s shrill whistle as the city was waking. His haunting cry of ‘Afilador’ would have me out on our little terrace at dawn trying to catch sight of him as he moved through the city, calling out for trade, running blades over stone using the motor of his Vespa.

I would imagine all sorts of lives for the new people I encountered around me, and this is where the tale of ‘The Knife Sharpener of Alzira’ came from, an act of imaginative projection inspired by the sound of his whistle and cry reaching my ears in the darkness.