Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. Someone must have been telling lies about me too, for without having done anything wrong I was, one fine morning, subjected to my own ordeal. Maybe not the bureaucratic nightmare suffered by Joseph K, the hero of Kafka’s The Trial, but a perplexing and disturbing petit-bourgeois trial nonetheless.

This is a story that has to start at the end. Here is the end. One Sunday morning I was sitting in a cafe in Sydney with my wife, Wenona, and our two young children. It was the usual mismatch of hope and reality: the image of a relaxing breakfast frayed by children emptying sugar sachets, poking cutlery at each other, harassing other tables. I watched them like a mangy guard-dog, too old for this.