Years ago I heard about a programme Paul Auster had on the American public radio station NPR called ‘The National Short Story Project’. Auster came on air the first night and asked American listeners to send in their stories. The only two conditions, he said, were that the stories should be true and short. What he was most interested in, he told them, were ‘real life stories that sounded like fiction’. A variation on that idea occurred to me then: to make myself into a teller of other people’s stories. And that’s what I did throughout 2009: seeking out and telling other people’s stories, stories I collected in Guatemala, Mexico, Iowa City, la Rioja and Geneva.