Nick Harkaway

The book is more complex.

The structures are more complex.

It's more poetic.

So that's the first thing.

There's a lot going on.

And then his language changes again in the post-Cold War novels.

There's a whole other thing going on there.

So that's number one.

Second thing is, yes, my...

Writing in my books does tend to be denser, playful, and so on.

But part of that with my earlier books is an absolutely determined attempt to put some clear blue water between him and me.

And the thing that I realized when I started talking about Carla's Choice, and I would have been so great to have this thought before I wrote the book, not because it would have changed anything, but because it would have made me feel much safer.

I was born in 1972.

And I grew up with my dad reading his work, new pages.

He'd write in the early morning and then come to the breakfast table, read them across the table to my mother.

Sometimes she'd type them up, you know, and then he'd be reading them again in the afternoon from the TypeScript or he'd be working on the TypeScript the following morning.

And incidentally, I love this.

They used to use scissors and a stapler.

That was cut and paste.

Because we're pre-digital word processing.