How to be an Alien

How to be an Alien

by George Mikes

(Adapted book. Pre-Intermediate level)

Preface

I wrote this book in 1946. Many people bought it and said kind things about it. I was surprised and pleased but I was also unhappy that they liked it.

I will explain.

It is very nice when a lot of people buy a book by a new writer. I’m sorry, ‘very nice’ is not an English thing to say. It is not unpleasant when a lot of readers like a new book.

Why was I unhappy? I wrote this book to tell the English what I thought about them, or ‘where to get off as they say. I thought I was brave. I thought, ‘This book is going to make the English angry!’ But no storm came! The English only said that my book was ‘quite amusing’. I was very unhappy.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard about a woman who gave this book to her husband because she thought it was ‘quite amusing’. The man sat down, put his feet up, and read the book. His face became darker and darker. When he finished the book, he stood up and said, ‘Rude! Very, very rude!’ He threw the book into the fire.

What a good Englishman! He said just the right thing, and I felt much better. I hoped to meet more men like him, but I never found another Englishman who did not like the book.

I have written many more books since then but nobody remembers them. Everybody thinks How to be an Alien is the only book that I have ever written. This is a problem. I am now in the middle of writing a very large and serious book, 750 pages long, about old Sumeria. I will win the Nobel Prize for it. It will make no difference; people will still think How to be an Aliens is the only book that I have ever written.

People ask me, ‘When are you going to write another How be an Alien?’ I am sure they mean to he kind, but they cannot quite understand my quiet reply: ‘Never, I hope.'

I think I am the right person to write about ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien. I have been an alien all my life. I first understood that I was an alien when I was twenty-six years old. In my country, Hungary, everybody was an alien so I did not think f was very different or unusual. Then I came to England and learned that I was different. This was an unpleasant surprise.

I learned immediately that I was an alien. People learn all important things in a few seconds. A long time ago I spent a lot of time with a young woman who was very proud of being English. One day, to my great surprise, she asked me to marry her.