I read a lot of poetry. All types of poetry, but mostly Catalan poetry, because I believe poetry is the essence of language. Reading the classics, be they medieval or contemporary, gives me a stylistic energy that I'm very interested in.

Research is necessary. However, you need to make sure you don't fall into its trap. You need to have time left for writing. To avoid the trap, I just throw myself into the abyss while at the same time being aware that if I'm dealing with information I don't know enough about, I have to go to someone and talk about it.

I'm interested in how memory and power come together in evil. These are obsessions of mine that appear throughout, like the theme of music. I know at some point or another one of my obsessions will emerge. You don't know how much I save in psychiatrist bills with this writing!

For someone like you who's a British citizen this might seem strange. How can you ban a language? It turns out that you can. During the dictatorship it was illegal to speak Catalan. This is an experience that we Catalans have all had to varying extents. Some more tense than others, but it's something we all share.

The essence of a novelist is to invent things and speak the truth, at the same time.

There were many books in my parents' home. I'm from a family of five children and we were all readers. And so by the time I left home, I had already read many books, and I was very interested in reading more. That was when I started to have the desire to write. But it wasn't like a divine apparition with angels and seraphins on high. Not for me, at least.

I think that's true of real life - we don't ever know anyone completely. Secrets are very important to creating a narrative work that's believable. The characters come into that world with secrets, as happens to all of us. As honest as we try to be in our relationships, we can never completely know someone. From a narrative perspective it's very important and pleasing - you want to have those secrets there. The secret is an essential part of the creation of the novel.