PARCHED fields, dry rivers, forests aflame, thousands of people dead because of the searing heat, electricity failure... Almost simultaneously, the world is struck by the ferocity of Nature and the failure of technology, with an arid dry season and a vicious summer. It is as though Europe, America, Asia and Africa are all suddenly "primitive". As though people in all these places are bound once again by unavoidable Fate and Chance.

At moments