Being here: in a particular time and place. That is the existential position with particular implications for literature. - Nadine Gordimer

The past has no wholeness, it has been etiolated by revised explanations of it, trampled over by hindsight - all their lives.

... what it really was like to live a life determined by the struggle to be free, as desert dwellers' days are determined by the struggle against thirst and those of dwellers amid snow and ice by the struggle against the numbing of cold.

Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.