This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 9780007352388

Version: 2019-01-03

For Kerstin and Louis Sparr, with love.

Greed is right.Greed works.Greed clarifies, cuts through, and capturesthe essence of the evolutionary spirit.Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money,for love, for knowledge – has marked theupward surge of mankind.

—Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street, 1987