I wanted to meet him because I loved a book he had written. I had seen in it that when he was funny, as he often was, it was not because he was trying to entertain but because he himself was enchanted by the comedy in the incident he was describing. Getting this incident, these people, this quirk of human behavior down, and getting it down right--that was what he had been enjoying, rather than "expressing himself": and while books written in this way are not necessarily great books, this is the way the great books I love best are written. It is the real thing. We had exchanged a good many letters about his writing, and I had heard something about him from other people. He was an Egyptian whose passport had been withdrawn because he was a communist, and he had been living for some years as an exile in Germany.... And so begins the story of Didi and Diana Athill. Ms. Athill has just died at 101. She is among my favorite writers. "After a Funeral"--quoted above--...