Sedaris

I took a copy of David Sedaris' When We Are Engulfed in Flames to Tehran in April. I remember reading it in cafes, waiting for my translator to turn up, giggling. Crybaby - a story about sitting next to a grieving hulk on a transatlantic flight - never fails to make me feel better. When a strange man from the secret service phoned my hotel room in the middle of the night, I took out Crybaby, read it again, and went back to sleep like - well - a baby.

There are many remarkable things about the way Sedaris writes. He is so poised, for a funny writer, a little like Alan Coren in the way that he squeezes so much joy from the mundane.

Anyway, he has a new piece, about Australia, in the New Yorker, which is not his best, and still very much better than almost anything else you will have read this weekend.