conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first paragraph for a book with the title 'A Good Man in Africa'
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Good Man in Africa
  But it wasn't always shrouded in this nostalgic fog for him; there were bar-flies and bores, lounge-lizards and lechers. Adulterers and cuckolds brushed shoulders in the billiard rooms, idle wives played bridge or tennis or sunbathed round the pool, their children in the care of nannies, their housework undertaken by stewards, their husbands earning comfortable salaries all day. They gossiped and bitched, thought about having affairs and sometimes did, and the dangerous languor that infected their hot cloudless days set many a time-bomb ticking beneath their cosy, united nuclear families.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He lay back on his towel, shielding his eyes with a forearm. This being the case, he wondered, why was he spending so much time with her? Well, he told himself, she was potentially a prime source for information on Adekunle and the KNP—which was the explanation he would offer if Fanshawe ever saw fit to question him about his mornings at the pool. He had, certainly, learned that a considerable portion of Adekunle's private fortune had gone to buy certain influential figures very expensive gifts, and had ascertained that Ussman Danda Ltd. was becoming dangerously overdrawn at the bank. But otherwise he had discovered little that he didn't know already. Adekunle, it appeared, didn't talk much about his political business; in fact, so Celia said, he hardly spoke to her at all. It was, she stressed, virtually a token marriage now. This information had been supplied the day before. Morgan had accompanied her to her car after their swim. After she told him this there had been a pause. Morgan had said, "Oh, I see."
  She had made a small grimace, as though it was a response she had expected. She hunched her shoulders. "One afternoon," she said frankly, "we could go for a drive."
  He had felt touched and flattered by the candour of her approach, sensing vaguely the emotional effort required to make it. He was flattered because it was the first time this had happened to him—at least in daylight and under conditions of sobriety. He thought of his quarantine period, still with several days to run, and said with as much respect and gentlemanly understanding as he could marshal, laying his hand on her arm, "No, Celia, I don't really think we should go for a drive, not now anyway."
  She had laughed with a hollow gaiety, and shook her hair. "No, you're right," she said. "Silly of me. I must be getting all confused." She paused. "Thanks though," she said earnestly and climbed into the car. She wound down the window. "We can still meet tomorrow, can't we? Same time?"
  As he lay back now he asked himself if he would have been so thoughtful and reticent if he hadn't been working the dreaded gonococci out of his system. He didn't press himself too strongly on that point, didn't insist on an answer; it was sufficient, surely, that he'd behaved commendably, taken care that there was no reason for Celia to think she'd done anything cheap. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her turn over and unclip her bikini top to present a bare back to the sun. As she awkwardly attempted to slip her arms out of the straps one breast suddenly hung free like a bell before it was resnugged in its bra cup. He knew, then, that he was kidding himself; his mornings with Celia Adekunle had nothing to do with information-gathering.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the mild-mannered insurance adjuster, is known as the guy who has it all: the sleek suits, the enviable status. But when Lorimer arrives at a business appointment and finds his client hanging from a pipe, his life spirals out of control. His car is blowtorched after he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. He becomes the fall guy of a colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious actress. As Lorimer becomes entangled in a conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past comes to light.
  This lushly atmospheric novel opens in Los Angeles in 1936, when architect Kay Fischer is approached by an elderly man named Salvador Carriscant, who claims to be her father—and who insists that she accompany him to Lisbon in a search of the great lost love of his life. En route to Portugal, Carriscant, a former surgeon in the war-torn Philippines, tells Kay the story behind her secret parentage. Set against the sultry blue afternoons of Manila in 1902, his is a tale of grisly murders, ghastly medical rivalries, and an illicit passion that will consume Carriscant's life and his daughter's imagination.
  In 1914, in a hotel room in German East Africa, American farmer Walter Smith dreams of Theodore Roosevelt. As he sleeps, a railway passenger swats at flies, regretting her decision to return to the Dark Continent and to her husband. On a faraway English riverbank, a jealous Felix Cobb watches his brother swim, and curses his sister-in-law-to-be. And in the background of the world's daily chatter swirl rumors of an Anglo-German conflict, the likes of which no one has ever seen. As the sons of the world match wits and weapons on a continent thousands of miles from home, desperation makes bedfellows of enemies and traitors of friends and family.
  These fifteen beguiling stories are populated by unlikely heroes who, desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives, turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a stewardess with tales of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence. In "Hardly Ever," a Scottish boy impresses his friends by recounting with prurient elaboration his awkward courtship of a local girl. In the title story, a sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimates the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. Endowed with mordant humor and rare compassion, Boyd's first collection of short stories is storytelling at its best.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Endowed with mordant humor and rare compassion, Boyd's first collection of short stories is storytelling at its best.. In the title story, a sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimates the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. In "Hardly Ever," a Scottish boy impresses his friends by recounting with prurient elaboration his awkward courtship of a local girl. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a stewardess with tales of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence.
  These fifteen beguiling stories are populated by unlikely heroes who, desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives, turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. As the sons of the world match wits and weapons on a continent thousands of miles from home, desperation makes bedfellows of enemies and traitors of friends and family. And in the background of the world's daily chatter swirl rumors of an Anglo-German conflict, the likes of which no one has ever seen. On a faraway English riverbank, a jealous Felix Cobb watches his brother swim, and curses his sister-in-law-to-be. As he sleeps, a railway passenger swats at flies, regretting her decision to return to the Dark Continent and to her husband.
  In 1914, in a hotel room in German East Africa, American farmer Walter Smith dreams of Theodore Roosevelt. Set against the sultry blue afternoons of Manila in 1902, his is a tale of grisly murders, ghastly medical rivalries, and an illicit passion that will consume Carriscant's life and his daughter's imagination. En route to Portugal, Carriscant, a former surgeon in the war-torn Philippines, tells Kay the story behind her secret parentage.
  This lushly atmospheric novel opens in Los Angeles in 1936, when architect Kay Fischer is approached by an elderly man named Salvador Carriscant, who claims to be her father—and who insists that she accompany him to Lisbon in a search of the great lost love of his life. As Lorimer becomes entangled in a conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past comes to light. He becomes the fall guy of a colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious actress. His car is blowtorched after he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. But when Lorimer arrives at a business appointment and finds his client hanging from a pipe, his life spirals out of control.To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the mild-mannered insurance adjuster, is known as the guy who has it all: the sleek suits, the enviable status