The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

I only like naturalistic stories. I love short, fantastic stories that cast a spell over the reader, that transport you instantly to another place with another set of rules, somewhere imagined by someone else.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

The Belgians tend to downplay the cultural divide issue, and the far-right issue, but there's a staggering degree of casual racism in Belgium, much worse than in the UK.

I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality.