Belgium is a country with a split personality.

I never know exactly where I'm going with a story, whether it's a short story or a novel. If I did I'd soon grow bored of it. The fun, for me, is in the finding out and the making sense of 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've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

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'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.