For how long have you been writing books ?

I started writing my first novel the day before I decided to leave university. I had borrowed a typewriter to start a dissertation and typed out a first chapter instead. That would have been 1985. The first novel, Ripley Bogle, was eventually published in Britain in 1989 when I was twenty five years old.

Does any writer (or, why not, musicien, painter or director) inspire your work ?

There are many people who inspire and influence my writing. English French and Russian 19th century writers in particular: Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol. 20th century influences include: Joyce, Robert Graves, Camus, Koestler, Orwell, Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Skvorecky, Samuel Selvon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut. Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director is someone I admire very much and Les Valseuses is my favourite ever film.

All music inspires me. I write late at night to the accompaniement of loud music. It doesn't matter what it is. Though the Les Inrockuptibles compilation CDs are very useful at the minute.

Who is your favorite writer ?

There are many. Joyce is a genius. I love Balzac very much but the best has to be Tolstoy. He's incomparable, extraordinary, sublime.

What kind of jobs, if any, have you ever performed ?

I have been a building labourer, a shop assistant, a security guard, a window salesman, a kilt salesman (!), a documentary director and a university teacher. I was a very good kilt salesman indeed.

Are you currently writing something ?

I am currently writing a novel called Le Citoyen Gonflable. (My two favourite French words - citoyen and gonflable).

Places (London and Belfast in Ripley Bogle, Ireland in you last book) seem to be very important in the " stream " of your writing. How do you feel it ?

I love all cities and I feel a mon aise in all cities. City dwellers know all cities because all cities are gloriously the same. The first time I went to Paris I felt entirely at home. It was the same in Berlin, Stockholm, London, Helsinki. Cities are what make me write.

You have written a text this summer for the French magazine Telerama, about a picture of a girl and a boy in a train (if I remember well, it was about youth passing by, with a sense of happiness and nostalgia, and everlasting life). Have you worked for others newspapers or magazines ?

I've written occasional short pieces for American or European magazines and newspapers. Only one or two a year. It's too hard. Writing novels is easy. The short form is truly difficult.

Do you write poetry, or theater ?

Never.

Your book "Manfreds Pain" doesn't seen to be published in France. Is it planed to be published in France ?