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When people ask me what is my main inspiration

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I say it is the ancient Greek drama

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if you take a play like Medea that's written 2300 years ago

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it is about a woman who murders her children because of jalousy in relation to her husband

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if that is not a crime story, I don't know what a crime story is

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the only difference is that there is no police officer in it

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because in Greece at that time there was no police force

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but I can assure you if they had had a police force, there would also have a policeman in the play

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but this story uses the mirror of crime to look upon contradictions in society

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that is what interests me.

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Look at McBeth, take McBeth and put Richard Nixon in there:

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you have the same story, in a way.

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And then I can say that, yes, there are also pure crime fictions that inspire me.

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For example Sherlock Holmes.

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Because many histories talk about English society,

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about hypocrisy, about many things

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So, I don't see any differences by writing crime fiction or another novel

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I think, I put up my cheek a little and say that crime fiction is one of the oldest literary genre that exists

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it's not invented by Edgar Alan Poe, it's much older than that.

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All of my ancestors were musicians, they were playing in churches, organ players and

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my grandfather was a composer and I think that when I was young I also thought of myself as a musician

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but I realised quite quickly that (I was playing the violin) I would never be as good as I would want to be

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so I, in a way, chose another instrument because you have to understand that writing is a sort of instrument you have in your hands

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But on the other hand you might say that music is a very essential part of writing

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as it is in painting, as it is in sculpturing, as it is in any other kind of art making, I would say

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My home was full of music but it was also full of books

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and I think I grew up in what you can call a really, really liberal family because

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first of all no one said anything if you were late at night reading

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and secondly no one asked you what you read

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and that is to me a good definition of what is a liberal family

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I think that the specific thing with my childhood was the fact that there was no mother around

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she had left the family so I grew up with my father and he was very occupied

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but I can still remember at night sometimes I would tell him something about what I had read

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and he was clever enough to take two minutes to listen to all the stupid things that I said

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and about what I read

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and I think it is one of the lessons that I learned: you always have to listen to a child

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I think that the real artist is the child because if you remember back when you were 4, 5 or 6 years old,

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you know, you had an enormous belief in the fact that you could transform a stone into a car,

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or a piece of wood into whatever

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Now, then you start school and you know what happens

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rationality takes over … maybe it is necessary

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but later on when you maybe eventually would like to become an artist,

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then you have to reconquer the thing you had as a child

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I think that it has to do with the sort of connection back to the courage you had as a child

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to ask the really, really difficult questions

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I sometimes ask people when I am out talking:

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who do you think is my greatest idol? or icon?

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and people guess this, and that, and I say

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no, I have photo, a small photo on my wall

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and the greatest idol is myself as a 12 year old

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and when I watch this guy, this boy, this me at 12 years old,

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I think that at time I was at my best. I didn't see any limit to life.

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I believed in imagination, in fantasy, and reality

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I thought every mountain was possible to climb, every desert was possible to get through

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so I look at that boy and I try to imitate him, I try to be as brave and as good as he was.

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The sensation of being able to put one word after another word making a sentence, and then making another sentence,

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and then having a story … this is to me a miracle.

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And this is the understanding of reading

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and then obviously came the next miracle: that you realise that you could do that yourself.

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It was the next miracle.

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I still remember that the first thing I ever wrote was a verse on Robinson Crusoe on one page

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I would give a finger to have that paper left

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but I don't have it, it's gone of course … I probably was 6 years old when I wrote it and I, by the way,

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still believe that Robinson Crusoe is the best novel ever written

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for a very simple reason: because Robinson is not alone on the island before Friday comes,

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he is alone on the island with the reader and that's important

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you are on that island, with Robinson, … you help him out

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that is a genius way of telling a story. I could never think of a plot better than that one

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You could take out certain characters in certain books,

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take them out of the books and bring them with you as friends.

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I think one of the most important thing with art is that you get friends there

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you could have a painting somewhere; when you see someone in a painting

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you could take that person out of the painting and make that person a friend

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that follows you in life.

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Art to me is essential to see how the world looks, to understand the world by seeing how other people demonstrate it

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it could be Francis Bacon or Goya or Ken Holtz (?)

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Sometimes I can understand it immediately

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sometimes I don't understand it at all

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and sometimes I don't want to understand it. I just want that feeling to be sucked into my universe and stay there

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I think real art, whether it is a painting or music, or whatever, always gives you a certain surprise

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if there is no surprise, I think it falls down.

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I go down to the Prado museum in Madrid once a year, it is a sort of pilgrimage that I do,

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I spend two days there.

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And you know to walk the rooms full of paintings by Velasquez and then come into Goya, for example,

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well, it is not the same museum; it is not the same … it is like it is two different worlds

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you could say they are both painters but there is something more they are different in,

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they tell me different stories about the human condition

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I think you cannot come closer than that to defining art: a good artist tells you A story of life.

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Another artist tells you another story, a bad artist doesn't tell you anything.

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I'm not afraid of talking about good art and bad art. I think we are living in a time when people are afraid of talking about that

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and I think it is not good because we must be able to say that some art is better than other

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then we can discuss that: what do you mean by that?, I don't agree with you … but we can have the discussion.

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Today I think that critics are very … they lack courage in a way.

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I think that if you look through history, in most art, the important kind of art, whether it is sculpture, books or whatever,

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there is some dimension of a dream, of a better society

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and it's obvious to me and to most people that we are living in a terrible world today

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and the most terrible thing with the world today, it does so many problems, it's completely unnecessary

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let me just give one example: me as a writer

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in year 2012, millions upon millions of children go out in life illiterate, they cannot read, they cannot write

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and this is absolutely unnecessary. We could have eradicated illiteracy a long time ago

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if we really would have wanted to do it. But we don't do it,

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so these people are lost because still reading and writing and the little mathematics are the most important tools you have in life

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and I find this so disgusting, such a shame, that obviously I have to talk about it

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when people ask me can people buy your books, novels, in Mozambique

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I say, "why?". There is only one book important here and that is the ABC book

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whether it is a computer program or a book, I don't care

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but eradicate illiteracy before you talk about something else

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and then we can go on and on, look on the word and most problems that kill people are unnecessary

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and I wouldn't understand how could I use my instrument without in one or another way talk about this

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I could not understand myself

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As a writer I am an intellectual and as an intellectual, my responsibility is to react in a way

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to what I see in society

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that is the role of the intellectual

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at least if you have the idea of being a radical intellectual

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for me it goes back to the enlightenment time of Diderot and Montaigne

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the role of the intellectual

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and I believe this is right and that is why I act the way I act

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I do write, I do write many various things but I also talk if necessary

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I would say it is my relation to the ideal of the enlightenment

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and I agree with that, with the fact that you should talk