I've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.

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 am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

Increasingly, those who used to teach and write critical or theoretical texts are writing fiction, poetry and so on; and kinds of texts are being produced that call for budding readers rather different from those who studied literature in the past.

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've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.