I don’t believe in adventure. Real life, for the overimaginative, is scary enough. Yet greed can overcome fear, even indolence, and having once tried Georgian food, I couldn’t forget it: hazelnuts and pomegranates, tarragon lemonade, pickled tree-buds, soupy mountain-dumplings.

On a visit to Russia, the novelist makes new intellectual friends and wants to cry as she sees so much beauty