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Words From Our Sponsor: A Jeweler Commissions a Novel
One of the first scenes in the British writer Fay Weldon's new novel takes place amid "the peaches and cream d?cor" of the Bulgari jewelry store on Sloane Street in London. There, attended to by "charming girls, and men too," the real estate mogul Barley Salt pays ?18,000 to buy his scheming second wife, Doris Dubois, "a sleek modern piece, a necklace, stripes of white and yellow gold, but encasing three ancient coins, the mount following the irregular contours of the thin worn bronze." Readers may not know that Bulgari, the Italian jewelry company, paid Ms. Weldon an undisclosed sum for a prominent place in the book, fittingly entitled "The Bulgari Connection." It is scheduled for distribution by the small publisher Grove/ Atlantic in the United States in November.
The world's oldest profession: selling out.
