July 27, 2025 • 31 mins
In this episode we chat to thriller writer Nick Harkaway about his latest novel, Karla's Choice, and ollowing in his father John Le Carré's footsteps by bringing George Smiley back to readers.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Nick Harkaway, author of novels such
as The Gone Away World and Angel Maker, and now
the custodian of his famous father John la Carrey's legacy. Nick,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, did I pronounce Harkaway properly?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I mean, as far as I know, I've only ever
seen it written down, So I mean, obviously I say it.
You just said it, but I got it out of
Brui's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, So so you know
your guess is as good as mine.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I mean, it is a pen name. I mean, we
don't need to go into your your real identity. It
can remain hidden. We were just talking before before I
launched into this intro about you're rather intriguing space. Because
this is a this is an audio only.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We wanted this to be video, Nick, but our viewers
complained they saw the seaman me and they said no,
please please drop the video. And our numbers have sore
and ever since. But it's a shame today because tell
us about your background. It looks like you're in heaven.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I've got I've got a background. I bought an actual
cloth background which is on a sort of a photographer's
frame behind me, because the dog's bed is over to
my right and looks exactly like dog's beds always do,
and it looks as if, well as if an extremely
smelly small animal has been sleeping there in a pile
of socks. And then on the other side is my
(01:25):
wife's desk, because we share an office. She obviously she
runs John McCarey Limited, the estate company for my father's work,
and I sit here between them, and so it doesn't
look like people always kind of they say, oh, can
we come and photograph you in your office? No, absolutely not.
It looks it looks like, you know, first of all,
(01:46):
my desk is a kind of Hell's scape of weird
things that sort of there's a there's for some reason,
there's a spray of disinfectant here. There's a couple of
premium ink cartridges, headphones, a wand of our sisters for
when I need to do selfies on a selfie stick,
not that anyone ever needs to do, various books, and
some kind of weird olive wood object which I was
(02:09):
given for reasons which I don't I don't entirely. Know
it looks slightly fastic.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well that's I think.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
If that is I think see a professional is the
only thing I can say, yes, it definitely, it definitely
looks filthy, which I think is why I was given
it might be.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
A lemon squeezer.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah or yeah yes, which will give everybody a nice idea.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I can.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I just say, though, I'm impressed that you work in
the same room as your wife. My wife and I
both work from home sometimes, and she cannot even stand
being on the same floor as me because I breathed
too loudly, I chew too loudly, I type too loudly.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I'm impressed. What is the secret?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
How do you work alongside your wife without getting shouted at?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
So it's in large parts consequence of doing as I'm told.
I used to have an office on the top of
the house, absolutely beautiful space up there, which has now
got an exercise bike and the kids. The kids kind
of do art up there, and it's it's a nice room,
but it's less nice now than it was when I
was in it. But when she decided to work from
home and she took on this job and we set
(03:16):
her up in this room, She's like, well, I've always
worked in an office my entire professional career and people,
so you're going to have to move down here and
be in the office with me for me to feel
comfortable and so on.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
That's nice.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So yeah, so she actually she actually required that I
come down and very nice. I mean, I have to
say it works really well.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
One of our bit problems is, I mean, the way
that you described your dog's arrangements there as if a
small smelly animal would socks st much. How I write
pretty much as desk and I've been there, so I
know right now we're gonna have to get on and
talk about you now and your books. But tell us
a little bit about about growing up. You obviously grew
up in a household of a famous writer, but tell
(03:59):
us about your own story of growing up and what
you did and what you did at university and all
the rest of that.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So it's funny. It's funny thinking about growing up in
the household of a famous variety because obviously I've never
grown up on anyone else's household, so I don't really
know what's different and what's not. I mean, I know
how my life is generally different, so I was born
in Truro in West co the seventies, and we lived
then in a converted sort of row of one up,
(04:30):
one room up, one room down Fisher cottages on the
edge of the cliff, and so it had been. It
had been converted into a house with six rooms, plus
a former cattle barn, which my parents told me when
I was born was actually still full of slightly dubious
organic slurry.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But I don't remember that.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I say slightly dubious, utterly horrendous, actually, but when I
remember it, they'd already converted it into a kind of
a space, and the whole place was quite that. It
was a wide house, but with quite narrow rooms and
quite high ones, because in one well at one end
of the house, where for a long time my dad's
office was, they'd they'd hollowed it out completely. It was
(05:15):
actually only five rooms, and they had a double height
ceiling which went up to these a frame rafters and
so on. And that house was on the south coast
of Cornwall, a long way out to the west, west
of Penzance, west of Mausal and so on. So basically
the only thing between you and the Atlantic storms is
the occasional very cold whale and so when the storms
come in, you can see them coming in across the sea.
(05:35):
You can see the line of rain, you can see
where the waves are being plucked up, and so on.
And for quite a long time I could not go
to sleep anywhere without the sound of.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Wind and rain.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
When we when we moved to London, I complained to
my parents that the wind doggie wasn't whistling around the
side of the house, and you know, so, so it
took me quite a long time to adjust to traffic
noise as being the same as wind, which emphatically still isn't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm fifty two.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
You spent time in London, right, Yeah, But you didn't
go to university in London.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
No. I went.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I went to Cambridge, which which turned out to be
sort of If I'd known what it was going to
be like before I went, I would have gone somewhere else.
I actually had a lovely time, but you know, and
I did a politics degree there and I left thinking
that I would do probably environmental law and politics, and
(06:33):
I got a job and I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I couldn't do that immediately.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I just needed to get out of academia.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
For a minute.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And do a real job, touch grass. And so I
got a job in the film industry because.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Obviously that's how you do a real job.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
And I mean, no, but I mean it really is right,
you know. But what it isn't is a kind of
obvious nine to five obvious job or whatever. And it's
not a factory job. It's not, you know, but it is.
My god, do you work hard on.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
A film set.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I mean, anybody who imagines that the film is a
kind of soft, wishy washy job, You're working unbelievable hours,
you know. And I saw there was a spark working
on something. I worked on an electrician who got electric
shocked off a ladder twelve feet above the ground and
(07:26):
they reckoned that. When he hit the ground, the impact
restarted his heart.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
It wasn't a stunt, that was.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
It wasn't Tom Cruise, was it.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
No, he wasn't a stunt man. He was an electrician.
And he was in work the following day. He was like, yeah, no, Fi,
I've got some bruises. Well, I mean, I'll get bored
if I stay home.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
So I did that, and I that then kind of
got me interested in scriptwriting.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And I was a scriptwriter for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That didn't work, and I was I was getting married,
and I didn't want to be an unemployed scriptwriter when
I got married, because just to me, that struck me
as being a little bit of a cliche. And my wife, Claire,
she was a lawyer, so she had the kind of
solid job and I was like, this is just too
(08:12):
embarrassing for her and for me. Right, she's this extraordinary,
kind of high powered person doing all the stuff, and
all her colleagues are kind of, you know, very serious,
and she's got this kind of wastrel on a string
that she leaves around. I was like, Okay, here's what
I'm gonna do. I'm going to write a novel and
if that doesn't work, I'll go and retrain and I'll
take the law conversion course and I'll try to be
(08:33):
an environmental lawyer. Then we are, Yeah, so we are
rescued from me as a really bad lawyer by the
sort of the reception of Gone Away World.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So that reminds me of the story of Stephen. So
I'm just going to say this because I was reading
about this for a while ago, the story of Stephen King,
because when he was riding Carrie, and you thought it
was rubbish. So he crumpled it up and shoved some
of the pages in the bin. And his wife was
the one who had a solid job, and she took
them out, read them and she said, look, this isn't bad.
Finish it off and we'll see what happened. And then
(09:08):
of course the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Can I just ask you a question, just taking you back,
you mentioned that if you had your time again, you
were if you knew at the time what it was like,
you wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Have gone to Cambridge. But you said time.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
So I didn't say. I didn't say I said great, great, sorry, great,
What you're asking me? What?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I thought?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Why?
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Why this sort of ambivalence?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It was quite Ah, it was predictable. It was it
was exactly what I would have expected if I'd thought
about it, But I was. I thought of university as being.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Sort of, I.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Don't know, just I expected it to be different. And
it felt very familiar, and you know, the teaching was fascinating,
the library was amazing. It felt claustrophobic and too much
like school, I guess, And I mean, maybe I would
have had exactly that experience wherever I've gone right, you know.
(10:15):
But but for what it's worth, that's the impression I've
always carried around, you know, And that's no, that's no
assault on Cambridge. It was you know, the politics course
there was very very good and I use it all
the time, so, you know, maybe the only politics student
(10:36):
it's ever said that.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Well, let's talk about this book that that turned turned
things for you, your your debut and be Gone Away World. Yeah,
a bunch of X Army ex Special Forces guys in
a post apocalyptic world who then trucks stuff around and
then you know they're on some major mission, which that.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Makes them sound much more run of the mill and
competent than they actually are. There there are a bunch
of rag tag misfit lunatics and there and only a
couple of them wherever special Forces. The rest of them
are just kind of mad people they've picked up along
(11:16):
the way, not just.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
That book, but some of your others in your early career,
if not outright sci fi, but elements of oh definitely
near future horizons embedded within them. So so why why
sci fi? Where? Where does that part of your writing
psyche come from?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I don't know where it comes from why not sci fi?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Uh? Sci fi is is a.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Form that allows you to look at tomorrow, which is
something we desperately need to do. It's always a reflection
of now. So it's exactly the same in that respects
as any other kind of writing. It in brace is
the possibility of radical social change, disruption of the world
in which we live by technology.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
It does only this sound familiar, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Science fiction is always the literature of now, you know,
the only reason that we kind of it's very interesting.
So there was a really great little book of correspondence
between Paul Austra and jam Curtsey, and they faxed one
another in quite a deliberate way. They didn't send letters,
I think because that was too slow, and they didn't
(12:29):
send email because that felt inauthentic, or maybe because they
started before email was a thing, although I don't think
they did. But so they faxed one another and then
they published the correspondence and there's a moment where Curtsey says, look,
I really admire you for allowing your characters to have
mobile phones because it diffuses the drama and somehow you
(12:50):
get round that. I find that fascinating because I mean,
most of all on a practical level, how does it
possibly diffuse the drama? You know, so human miscommunication is
possible face to face, You're not in a better position
to kind of convey the truth if you can sort
of reach.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
People on the phone.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Phones, you know, in America particularly, but around the world,
generally phones cut out, they go dead, people refuse to
answer them. You can always keep information sequestrated. You can
give people reasons why they're keeping something a secret from
someone they could be in touch with should be telling.
You know, I just don't believe that as a practical matter,
phones impact drama in a negative way, And I feel
(13:31):
like doing the hard things giving someone a reason not
to blub the secret, or giving them an obstacle that
they can't overcome, whether they'll be overheard, you know, whatever
it is. You know, just that actually just produces better
drama rather than worse. And there's a kind of obsession
in some areas of the literary and publishing world with
(13:53):
the idea that if you subtract technology from the human experience,
you get something more real or authentic. That sort of
psychoanalysis and art and religion, spirituality lead us to our
real selves, and technology leads us away from it. Science
(14:14):
leads us away from it, and I don't understand how
that could possibly either be true or be a persuasive vision.
Science and technology are inherent in in who what we are.
We live in a technological society. We always, you know,
we have done from the moment when we start to
identify ourselves as human. You know, you're dealing with tool
(14:36):
makers and a society constructed on our understanding of you know, however,
naively of science, whether it's you know, share cropping or
you know, or animal migrations. There's no separating humans from
our technology and our knowledge, and you don't get anything.
You can find out emotional truth. You can find it
(14:59):
kind of quiet place, but one way or another, you
have to come back and be able to do that
emotional truth in the technological space. A friend of mine
years ago was in a Zen monastery and the teacher
there said to him, so, you do it really well here.
The question is can you do it when you go home?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Absolutely, I mean you mentioned could see. I mean, I've
got Disgrace up on my bookshelf. One of my favorite
books Paul Asta. I've only ever read one of his.
It's sort of post modernist crime fiction. M it's quite
I had no idea they'd communicated with each other, because
they seemed completely worlds world's apart. But now that brings
(15:46):
us from sci fi. I mean, I love sci fi.
I've got whole shelves full of sci fi. I tried
my earliest attempt at writing with sci fi short stories.
They were they were awful. I've still got handwritten.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
I think you should read us one.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
They were truly awful. I've still got a box file
full of them in handwriting. My idea was because I
was reading lots of sci fi anthologies at the time,
and all of the classics Arthur C. Clarke and Anadian
writer called Greg Bear who wrote hard sci fi, who
was my favorite, And I thought, you know what, I'll
write a bunch of short stories. I'll send them off
and they'll be published as and anthology. Vera's in Can't
(16:17):
Age sixteen. I didn't quite work.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Out what sort of stories were. They give us an example.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Of a proper sci fi, you know, hard sci fi,
distant world's aliens first contact, all of that kind of
grand grand sci fi tradition, rather than say, some of
the later modernist modernist interpretations of sci fi. But anyway,
we're getting too far away from the book that we're
(16:43):
here to talk about your latest novel, which is of
course Carla's Choice, which takes us back to your father's
father's creations. So lead us through the journey of Carla's Choice.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Well, so, my father died in and we as a
family inherited his rights, and with those rights came a
letter of wishes which said what all writers letters of
wishes should say, which is, you know, live well, have
a great time. And by the way, while you're at it,
could you please make me the most famous author in
all of human history? You know, can you ensure the
(17:19):
perpetuity of my name and its prominence in the great
role of creative work? I mean, very firmly tongue in cheek, right,
I could sort of see him giggling at us from
beyond the graves, very pleased himself for the glass of
Scotch as he's writing his letter.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
But as a practical matter, you know, the job is
partly when you know, when you inherit in a state
to keep the estate current. And again, as a practical matter,
we live in a kind of again as a practical matter.
We live in an attention economy, and so there's a
number of things you are going to have to do
if you want people to continue reading books. The first
(17:58):
and most obvious is probably television and film, if you
can arrange that, more power to you. Other things, radio adaptations,
audio books, all these things help. And so we've got
a theater production of The Spark Came from the Cold
coming this this autumn, which is exciting. That's in the
West End's never happened before. There's never been a John
McCarey west End production. But fundamentally, oh and the other
(18:24):
thing you can do is try and get your chosen
book onto the national curriculum, which guarantees that school children
will read it and that they will hate you forever,
but they will never forget your name. You know, they
probably forget what you wrote, but yeah, you know, and
the things that will so slightly guarantees that people will
read the book potentially a little bit too early, you know.
(18:46):
So yeah, so the final thing you can do is
more books. You know, now there is not a kind
of stash of unpublished the Carre texts. We had one,
but that's as as I know. That's the only complete
novel that was unpublished. So the question then became, you know,
sort of should we commission someone to write another? And
(19:10):
I said, yeah, we should definitely do that, and I'll
make a list. So I went away and I made
a list of people, really good list of people from
all across the world, different kinds of writers, commercial, literary,
and so on, different perspectives. I was really excited about it,
and I wasn't on it. I did not put myself
on the list. I made a very firm decision that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
And we came to have the meeting and I kind
of unscrolled my enormous list, and my brother Simon, so, well,
just before we get to your list, and I'm sure
it's a great list, I don't think any of those
people should do it.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I think it should be you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
And I did a kind of double take of the
soul and I realized that all the reasons I wasn't
going to do it. It's my father's world. It's this iconic
piece of twentieth century literature. It's one of the great
kind of defining narratives that people used to understand the
twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
In the Cold War and so on, all those things.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
There were reasons why I should be doing it because
it was impossible, because it was challenging, because I was
frightened of it, because it seemed like an impossible ask.
And if you're not kind of trying to do the
impossible thing every so often as a writer, you're kind of,
you know, you're you're stagnating.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Said, all right, well, let me go away and see
if I can. And a little while later I came
back and said, all right, let's give this a try.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Well, I'll have to say, as a as a huge
fan of your father's work and a huge fan of
George Smiley, and having read this book, I can say
it stands, you know, it stands with the candidate it is.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
It's sublimely written, and it works. It works. I mean
I have read books that have been written by other.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Writers posthumously, in some using somebody else's characters, and they
don't often work. The voice doesn't always work. But this,
this was a messive. This took me back. This took
me back to when I was reading you know, Smiley's
People or Tinker Tailor or all of that, and it
was amazing You've done a phenomenal job on it, Thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. And what I
particularly love about it is you clearly love prose. You
love you love the delights that prose can give on
on on the written on the written page, which which
isn't always associated with the crime or thriller genre, but
(21:45):
you've clearly embraced that, and that's clearly in your wheelhouse
and so absolutely fabulous book. But for for the listeners
who don't know, if you could give us the thirty
second pitch of what the book is actually about, what
periods are, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So, Carlo's Choice takes place in the decade between The
Spy Game from the Cold and Tinker Taylor's Lot of Spy.
George Smiley returns to the Circus after events in the
Spark Game from the Cold. I should say that the
book is set up so that you don't have to
have read Spy. The idea is that when you've read
Carl's Choice, you're going to want to read all my
father's books anyway, so you know you can. You can
(22:23):
choose to enter through Spy, you can choose to enter
through Carla's choice, you can come back from having read
all of them and sort of slotted in so in
that in that kind of empty eight to nine years,
Smiley returns to the Circus control kind of bludgeons him
back to answer a very simple question, What's what's happened
(22:44):
to this missing Hungarian literary agent in London? What's going
on with that? You know, there's a suggestion it might
be an espionage matter because a Russian assassin has turned
up to kill him and defected. But find us this man,
find out what's going on, just make sure everything's in place.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Not a big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And Smiley of course goes off and starts to ask
questions and to uncover the truth and finds himself increasingly
enmeshed in the narrative of this man, his life as
a indeed as a Russian spy, and the reality of
this moment and the machinations of Carla, who Carla the
(23:31):
great kind of arch enemy of Smiley and of the
Circus the sis analog in my father's books, Carla doesn't
exist at all, inspire again from the cold, and it
has always been Smiley's nemesis and in Ka Taylor, So
this is the moment where their enmity begins, with the
descent into this story, which has actually threatened Carla on
(23:57):
a personal level but in an abstruse, unknown way, and
now is kind of drawing him out of the woodwork
to sort of reclaim his security and his secrecy. It's
a it's a I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
So this is, in effect, it's a Carla origin story
to some yes.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Although I'm really I'm always very cautious of that because
I don't usually enjoy origin stories because they are the
moment when you see a character you already know doing
the thing that they do really well badly because they're
learning to do it. And so Smiley is already an
established spy in this book, Carla is already an established spy.
(24:40):
So we're getting backstory and hints of truth, but with
both of them part of the point of them in
the story, in the the overarching story of my father's writing,
and now these books that I'm writing into the into
the spaces, they are myster they're shadowy, and so the
(25:02):
rule I made for myself was that it's like the
the the end of Indiana Jones and the last what
is it raised the lost stuff. They put the Arc
of the Covenant in a box. They put the box
on a trolley and they wheel it into the warehouse,
and you can see industrial like magic did a kind
of a beautiful glass painting behind it, and the pools
(25:24):
of light appear to go on and on and on
for miles and miles into the distance. And there are
just hundreds of thousands, probably millions of crates in this warehouse.
And all I wanted to know as a child was
what was in the other ten millions, Like the only
thing I cared about I have never cared about. You know,
the other stuff that Indiana jiants does fine, you know,
(25:44):
some of it's enjoyable, some of it's not whatever, But
all I wanted to know was the story of those.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Other crates amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
And that's that's smiling of Carlo, just so that we're clear,
when you reveal something about either one of them, it
has to be in the context of showing that warehouse
of who they are, so that all you know when
you learn something new is that there's not enough in
what you've just learned. And the mystery just got deeper.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
I mean, your found those books were also you know,
a political critique on Britain or a social critique as well.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Is that something that you're keen to continue.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes. So the later books, the post Cold War novels,
were very overtly political, and they pointed the finger very specifically.
The Smiley books in general were, as you say, occasionally
a social critique, and they were broadly about how to
do the right thing when the impetus of the world
around you is for you to do the wrong thing.
(26:41):
They were about trying to be decent in the face
of the morally gray or the morally corrupting. And so
I've taken that very much on board and sort of
stayed in that space, which is more Noirrish than it
is demagogic or you know, but I do feel so.
(27:05):
He was also always writing books in the now. Part
of the reason that the dates in his books are
quite flexible for the most part is that they were
always intended to be today, and so they're not anchored
to specific points in history. Although they reference the Cold War,
but the tenth polls of the Cold War, which date events,
(27:28):
don't really appear in the books they have. Pigs isn't there,
Cuban missile crisis isn't there jfk assassination isn't there?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You know, so.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Instead of being overtly political, they are about finding your
way in the dark. I want to be able to
do that. Although I'm obviously writing historical fiction. I want
to be able to do that a little bit also
for now. So one of the things that I do,
(27:57):
and with Carlo's choice, one of the things I do
is tell the potty history of Hungary. Hungary is a
kind of you know, a slightly square peg round whole
country in the European Union right now? Why is it
that way? You know, if you're going to understand the
ebb and flow of the world around you, you need
to know history. And we don't really teach history of
(28:19):
anything other than the history of the UK in UK schools,
and so little bits of that and drawing people into
here is a perspective that you haven't seen before. Here
is a narrative that in the world is as central
to the people who hold it as your narrative about
your life is to you. You know, so maybe understand
the reverse angle.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
And as we come to the end of this, can
we assume that you're writing another in the series.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
You don't even have to assume we announced it the
other day. So yes, I am writing the new book,
The taper Man. Even now, when I finished this conversation,
I will be going back to my desk and to
the meeting between Control and Smiley which kicks off the
latest story.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And when can we see that? When will that be out?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Any I would guess that's next year, probably in the autumn,
but I cannot be specific because I'm not in control
of the publishing schedule.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
And I know that you will be at Bloody Scotland
alongside Mick Heron to give.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I will Lovely mech which should.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Be one of the highlights of the whole festival. Where
else can people catch you?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I'm at Capital Crime and I'm at the Thietsman's Festival.
I think is there anywhere else?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
List on the John leccarry website of where I will be.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Brilliant, so people can look that up and find out
where Nick is going to be, because I'm sure you know,
if this is anything to go by, when you when
you're interviewed by proper people, that's going to be a
fascinating conversation. Right well, I know what can I say
that brings us to the end of another episode.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
If you've enjoyed the show, please do.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Tune in, tell your friends, leave messages on your favorite
podcast app, and.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Please do spread the word now.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Vassiam Cahn, if we were going to be on the
curriculum for the uk A level syllables or whatever it is,
what kind of fiction do you think we would be writing?
Speaker 5 (30:28):
What would you write to beyond that syllables?
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Well, I think we should write a romanticy because apparently
everybody everybody's writing romanticies at this moment.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
I think you're right. Romance. Ancy is the way forward.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Romance.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
I actually see you doing more of something like a
five year old book and ABC something like that.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
You know, party training. How about that party training. We
could get you to do concitrant authors, and I.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Could get you to do the illustrations with with your crayons, but.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I have to write my books with them. Nick, it's
been an absolute pleasure having you on. Ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for tuning in. We have been your friends.
The Red Hot Chili Writers on Murder Junction
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Nick Harkaway, author of novels such
as The Gone Away World and Angel Maker, and now
the custodian of his famous father John la Carrey's legacy. Nick,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, did I pronounce Harkaway properly?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I mean, as far as I know, I've only ever
seen it written down, So I mean, obviously I say it.
You just said it, but I got it out of
Brui's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, So so you know
your guess is as good as mine.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I mean, it is a pen name. I mean, we
don't need to go into your your real identity. It
can remain hidden. We were just talking before before I
launched into this intro about you're rather intriguing space. Because
this is a this is an audio only.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We wanted this to be video, Nick, but our viewers
complained they saw the seaman me and they said no,
please please drop the video. And our numbers have sore
and ever since. But it's a shame today because tell
us about your background. It looks like you're in heaven.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I've got I've got a background. I bought an actual
cloth background which is on a sort of a photographer's
frame behind me, because the dog's bed is over to
my right and looks exactly like dog's beds always do,
and it looks as if, well as if an extremely
smelly small animal has been sleeping there in a pile
of socks. And then on the other side is my
(01:25):
wife's desk, because we share an office. She obviously she
runs John McCarey Limited, the estate company for my father's work,
and I sit here between them, and so it doesn't
look like people always kind of they say, oh, can
we come and photograph you in your office? No, absolutely not.
It looks it looks like, you know, first of all,
(01:46):
my desk is a kind of Hell's scape of weird
things that sort of there's a there's for some reason,
there's a spray of disinfectant here. There's a couple of
premium ink cartridges, headphones, a wand of our sisters for
when I need to do selfies on a selfie stick,
not that anyone ever needs to do, various books, and
some kind of weird olive wood object which I was
(02:09):
given for reasons which I don't I don't entirely. Know
it looks slightly fastic.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well that's I think.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
If that is I think see a professional is the
only thing I can say, yes, it definitely, it definitely
looks filthy, which I think is why I was given
it might be.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
A lemon squeezer.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah or yeah yes, which will give everybody a nice idea.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I can.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I just say, though, I'm impressed that you work in
the same room as your wife. My wife and I
both work from home sometimes, and she cannot even stand
being on the same floor as me because I breathed
too loudly, I chew too loudly, I type too loudly.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I'm impressed. What is the secret?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
How do you work alongside your wife without getting shouted at?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
So it's in large parts consequence of doing as I'm told.
I used to have an office on the top of
the house, absolutely beautiful space up there, which has now
got an exercise bike and the kids. The kids kind
of do art up there, and it's it's a nice room,
but it's less nice now than it was when I
was in it. But when she decided to work from
home and she took on this job and we set
(03:16):
her up in this room, She's like, well, I've always
worked in an office my entire professional career and people,
so you're going to have to move down here and
be in the office with me for me to feel
comfortable and so on.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
That's nice.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So yeah, so she actually she actually required that I
come down and very nice. I mean, I have to
say it works really well.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
One of our bit problems is, I mean, the way
that you described your dog's arrangements there as if a
small smelly animal would socks st much. How I write
pretty much as desk and I've been there, so I
know right now we're gonna have to get on and
talk about you now and your books. But tell us
a little bit about about growing up. You obviously grew
up in a household of a famous writer, but tell
(03:59):
us about your own story of growing up and what
you did and what you did at university and all
the rest of that.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So it's funny. It's funny thinking about growing up in
the household of a famous variety because obviously I've never
grown up on anyone else's household, so I don't really
know what's different and what's not. I mean, I know
how my life is generally different, so I was born
in Truro in West co the seventies, and we lived
then in a converted sort of row of one up,
(04:30):
one room up, one room down Fisher cottages on the
edge of the cliff, and so it had been. It
had been converted into a house with six rooms, plus
a former cattle barn, which my parents told me when
I was born was actually still full of slightly dubious
organic slurry.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But I don't remember that.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I say slightly dubious, utterly horrendous, actually, but when I
remember it, they'd already converted it into a kind of
a space, and the whole place was quite that. It
was a wide house, but with quite narrow rooms and
quite high ones, because in one well at one end
of the house, where for a long time my dad's
office was, they'd they'd hollowed it out completely. It was
(05:15):
actually only five rooms, and they had a double height
ceiling which went up to these a frame rafters and
so on. And that house was on the south coast
of Cornwall, a long way out to the west, west
of Penzance, west of Mausal and so on. So basically
the only thing between you and the Atlantic storms is
the occasional very cold whale and so when the storms
come in, you can see them coming in across the sea.
(05:35):
You can see the line of rain, you can see
where the waves are being plucked up, and so on.
And for quite a long time I could not go
to sleep anywhere without the sound of.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Wind and rain.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
When we when we moved to London, I complained to
my parents that the wind doggie wasn't whistling around the
side of the house, and you know, so, so it
took me quite a long time to adjust to traffic
noise as being the same as wind, which emphatically still isn't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm fifty two.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
You spent time in London, right, Yeah, But you didn't
go to university in London.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
No. I went.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I went to Cambridge, which which turned out to be
sort of If I'd known what it was going to
be like before I went, I would have gone somewhere else.
I actually had a lovely time, but you know, and
I did a politics degree there and I left thinking
that I would do probably environmental law and politics, and
(06:33):
I got a job and I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I couldn't do that immediately.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I just needed to get out of academia.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
For a minute.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And do a real job, touch grass. And so I
got a job in the film industry because.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Obviously that's how you do a real job.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
And I mean, no, but I mean it really is right,
you know. But what it isn't is a kind of
obvious nine to five obvious job or whatever. And it's
not a factory job. It's not, you know, but it is.
My god, do you work hard on.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
A film set.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I mean, anybody who imagines that the film is a
kind of soft, wishy washy job, You're working unbelievable hours,
you know. And I saw there was a spark working
on something. I worked on an electrician who got electric
shocked off a ladder twelve feet above the ground and
(07:26):
they reckoned that. When he hit the ground, the impact
restarted his heart.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
It wasn't a stunt, that was.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
It wasn't Tom Cruise, was it.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
No, he wasn't a stunt man. He was an electrician.
And he was in work the following day. He was like, yeah, no, Fi,
I've got some bruises. Well, I mean, I'll get bored
if I stay home.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
So I did that, and I that then kind of
got me interested in scriptwriting.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And I was a scriptwriter for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That didn't work, and I was I was getting married,
and I didn't want to be an unemployed scriptwriter when
I got married, because just to me, that struck me
as being a little bit of a cliche. And my wife, Claire,
she was a lawyer, so she had the kind of
solid job and I was like, this is just too
(08:12):
embarrassing for her and for me. Right, she's this extraordinary,
kind of high powered person doing all the stuff, and
all her colleagues are kind of, you know, very serious,
and she's got this kind of wastrel on a string
that she leaves around. I was like, Okay, here's what
I'm gonna do. I'm going to write a novel and
if that doesn't work, I'll go and retrain and I'll
take the law conversion course and I'll try to be
(08:33):
an environmental lawyer. Then we are, Yeah, so we are
rescued from me as a really bad lawyer by the
sort of the reception of Gone Away World.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So that reminds me of the story of Stephen. So
I'm just going to say this because I was reading
about this for a while ago, the story of Stephen King,
because when he was riding Carrie, and you thought it
was rubbish. So he crumpled it up and shoved some
of the pages in the bin. And his wife was
the one who had a solid job, and she took
them out, read them and she said, look, this isn't bad.
Finish it off and we'll see what happened. And then
(09:08):
of course the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Can I just ask you a question, just taking you back,
you mentioned that if you had your time again, you
were if you knew at the time what it was like,
you wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Have gone to Cambridge. But you said time.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
So I didn't say. I didn't say I said great, great, sorry, great,
What you're asking me? What?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I thought?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Why?
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Why this sort of ambivalence?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It was quite Ah, it was predictable. It was it
was exactly what I would have expected if I'd thought
about it, But I was. I thought of university as being.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Sort of, I.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Don't know, just I expected it to be different. And
it felt very familiar, and you know, the teaching was fascinating,
the library was amazing. It felt claustrophobic and too much
like school, I guess, And I mean, maybe I would
have had exactly that experience wherever I've gone right, you know.
(10:15):
But but for what it's worth, that's the impression I've
always carried around, you know, And that's no, that's no
assault on Cambridge. It was you know, the politics course
there was very very good and I use it all
the time, so, you know, maybe the only politics student
(10:36):
it's ever said that.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Well, let's talk about this book that that turned turned
things for you, your your debut and be Gone Away World. Yeah,
a bunch of X Army ex Special Forces guys in
a post apocalyptic world who then trucks stuff around and
then you know they're on some major mission, which that.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Makes them sound much more run of the mill and
competent than they actually are. There there are a bunch
of rag tag misfit lunatics and there and only a
couple of them wherever special Forces. The rest of them
are just kind of mad people they've picked up along
(11:16):
the way, not just.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
That book, but some of your others in your early career,
if not outright sci fi, but elements of oh definitely
near future horizons embedded within them. So so why why
sci fi? Where? Where does that part of your writing
psyche come from?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I don't know where it comes from why not sci fi?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Uh? Sci fi is is a.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Form that allows you to look at tomorrow, which is
something we desperately need to do. It's always a reflection
of now. So it's exactly the same in that respects
as any other kind of writing. It in brace is
the possibility of radical social change, disruption of the world
in which we live by technology.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
It does only this sound familiar, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Science fiction is always the literature of now, you know,
the only reason that we kind of it's very interesting.
So there was a really great little book of correspondence
between Paul Austra and jam Curtsey, and they faxed one
another in quite a deliberate way. They didn't send letters,
I think because that was too slow, and they didn't
(12:29):
send email because that felt inauthentic, or maybe because they
started before email was a thing, although I don't think
they did. But so they faxed one another and then
they published the correspondence and there's a moment where Curtsey says, look,
I really admire you for allowing your characters to have
mobile phones because it diffuses the drama and somehow you
(12:50):
get round that. I find that fascinating because I mean,
most of all on a practical level, how does it
possibly diffuse the drama? You know, so human miscommunication is
possible face to face, You're not in a better position
to kind of convey the truth if you can sort
of reach.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
People on the phone.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Phones, you know, in America particularly, but around the world,
generally phones cut out, they go dead, people refuse to
answer them. You can always keep information sequestrated. You can
give people reasons why they're keeping something a secret from
someone they could be in touch with should be telling.
You know, I just don't believe that as a practical matter,
phones impact drama in a negative way, And I feel
(13:31):
like doing the hard things giving someone a reason not
to blub the secret, or giving them an obstacle that
they can't overcome, whether they'll be overheard, you know, whatever
it is. You know, just that actually just produces better
drama rather than worse. And there's a kind of obsession
in some areas of the literary and publishing world with
(13:53):
the idea that if you subtract technology from the human experience,
you get something more real or authentic. That sort of
psychoanalysis and art and religion, spirituality lead us to our
real selves, and technology leads us away from it. Science
(14:14):
leads us away from it, and I don't understand how
that could possibly either be true or be a persuasive vision.
Science and technology are inherent in in who what we are.
We live in a technological society. We always, you know,
we have done from the moment when we start to
identify ourselves as human. You know, you're dealing with tool
(14:36):
makers and a society constructed on our understanding of you know, however,
naively of science, whether it's you know, share cropping or
you know, or animal migrations. There's no separating humans from
our technology and our knowledge, and you don't get anything.
You can find out emotional truth. You can find it
(14:59):
kind of quiet place, but one way or another, you
have to come back and be able to do that
emotional truth in the technological space. A friend of mine
years ago was in a Zen monastery and the teacher
there said to him, so, you do it really well here.
The question is can you do it when you go home?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Absolutely, I mean you mentioned could see. I mean, I've
got Disgrace up on my bookshelf. One of my favorite
books Paul Asta. I've only ever read one of his.
It's sort of post modernist crime fiction. M it's quite
I had no idea they'd communicated with each other, because
they seemed completely worlds world's apart. But now that brings
(15:46):
us from sci fi. I mean, I love sci fi.
I've got whole shelves full of sci fi. I tried
my earliest attempt at writing with sci fi short stories.
They were they were awful. I've still got handwritten.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
I think you should read us one.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
They were truly awful. I've still got a box file
full of them in handwriting. My idea was because I
was reading lots of sci fi anthologies at the time,
and all of the classics Arthur C. Clarke and Anadian
writer called Greg Bear who wrote hard sci fi, who
was my favorite, And I thought, you know what, I'll
write a bunch of short stories. I'll send them off
and they'll be published as and anthology. Vera's in Can't
(16:17):
Age sixteen. I didn't quite work.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Out what sort of stories were. They give us an example.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Of a proper sci fi, you know, hard sci fi,
distant world's aliens first contact, all of that kind of
grand grand sci fi tradition, rather than say, some of
the later modernist modernist interpretations of sci fi. But anyway,
we're getting too far away from the book that we're
(16:43):
here to talk about your latest novel, which is of
course Carla's Choice, which takes us back to your father's
father's creations. So lead us through the journey of Carla's Choice.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Well, so, my father died in and we as a
family inherited his rights, and with those rights came a
letter of wishes which said what all writers letters of
wishes should say, which is, you know, live well, have
a great time. And by the way, while you're at it,
could you please make me the most famous author in
all of human history? You know, can you ensure the
(17:19):
perpetuity of my name and its prominence in the great
role of creative work? I mean, very firmly tongue in cheek, right,
I could sort of see him giggling at us from
beyond the graves, very pleased himself for the glass of
Scotch as he's writing his letter.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
But as a practical matter, you know, the job is
partly when you know, when you inherit in a state
to keep the estate current. And again, as a practical matter,
we live in a kind of again as a practical matter.
We live in an attention economy, and so there's a
number of things you are going to have to do
if you want people to continue reading books. The first
(17:58):
and most obvious is probably television and film, if you
can arrange that, more power to you. Other things, radio adaptations,
audio books, all these things help. And so we've got
a theater production of The Spark Came from the Cold
coming this this autumn, which is exciting. That's in the
West End's never happened before. There's never been a John
McCarey west End production. But fundamentally, oh and the other
(18:24):
thing you can do is try and get your chosen
book onto the national curriculum, which guarantees that school children
will read it and that they will hate you forever,
but they will never forget your name. You know, they
probably forget what you wrote, but yeah, you know, and
the things that will so slightly guarantees that people will
read the book potentially a little bit too early, you know.
(18:46):
So yeah, so the final thing you can do is
more books. You know, now there is not a kind
of stash of unpublished the Carre texts. We had one,
but that's as as I know. That's the only complete
novel that was unpublished. So the question then became, you know,
sort of should we commission someone to write another? And
(19:10):
I said, yeah, we should definitely do that, and I'll
make a list. So I went away and I made
a list of people, really good list of people from
all across the world, different kinds of writers, commercial, literary,
and so on, different perspectives. I was really excited about it,
and I wasn't on it. I did not put myself
on the list. I made a very firm decision that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
And we came to have the meeting and I kind
of unscrolled my enormous list, and my brother Simon, so, well,
just before we get to your list, and I'm sure
it's a great list, I don't think any of those
people should do it.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I think it should be you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
And I did a kind of double take of the
soul and I realized that all the reasons I wasn't
going to do it. It's my father's world. It's this iconic
piece of twentieth century literature. It's one of the great
kind of defining narratives that people used to understand the
twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
In the Cold War and so on, all those things.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
There were reasons why I should be doing it because
it was impossible, because it was challenging, because I was
frightened of it, because it seemed like an impossible ask.
And if you're not kind of trying to do the
impossible thing every so often as a writer, you're kind of,
you know, you're you're stagnating.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Said, all right, well, let me go away and see
if I can. And a little while later I came
back and said, all right, let's give this a try.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Well, I'll have to say, as a as a huge
fan of your father's work and a huge fan of
George Smiley, and having read this book, I can say
it stands, you know, it stands with the candidate it is.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
It's sublimely written, and it works. It works. I mean
I have read books that have been written by other.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Writers posthumously, in some using somebody else's characters, and they
don't often work. The voice doesn't always work. But this,
this was a messive. This took me back. This took
me back to when I was reading you know, Smiley's
People or Tinker Tailor or all of that, and it
was amazing You've done a phenomenal job on it, Thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. And what I
particularly love about it is you clearly love prose. You
love you love the delights that prose can give on
on on the written on the written page, which which
isn't always associated with the crime or thriller genre, but
(21:45):
you've clearly embraced that, and that's clearly in your wheelhouse
and so absolutely fabulous book. But for for the listeners
who don't know, if you could give us the thirty
second pitch of what the book is actually about, what
periods are, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So, Carlo's Choice takes place in the decade between The
Spy Game from the Cold and Tinker Taylor's Lot of Spy.
George Smiley returns to the Circus after events in the
Spark Game from the Cold. I should say that the
book is set up so that you don't have to
have read Spy. The idea is that when you've read
Carl's Choice, you're going to want to read all my
father's books anyway, so you know you can. You can
(22:23):
choose to enter through Spy, you can choose to enter
through Carla's choice, you can come back from having read
all of them and sort of slotted in so in
that in that kind of empty eight to nine years,
Smiley returns to the Circus control kind of bludgeons him
back to answer a very simple question, What's what's happened
(22:44):
to this missing Hungarian literary agent in London? What's going
on with that? You know, there's a suggestion it might
be an espionage matter because a Russian assassin has turned
up to kill him and defected. But find us this man,
find out what's going on, just make sure everything's in place.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Not a big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And Smiley of course goes off and starts to ask
questions and to uncover the truth and finds himself increasingly
enmeshed in the narrative of this man, his life as
a indeed as a Russian spy, and the reality of
this moment and the machinations of Carla, who Carla the
(23:31):
great kind of arch enemy of Smiley and of the
Circus the sis analog in my father's books, Carla doesn't
exist at all, inspire again from the cold, and it
has always been Smiley's nemesis and in Ka Taylor, So
this is the moment where their enmity begins, with the
descent into this story, which has actually threatened Carla on
(23:57):
a personal level but in an abstruse, unknown way, and
now is kind of drawing him out of the woodwork
to sort of reclaim his security and his secrecy. It's
a it's a I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
So this is, in effect, it's a Carla origin story
to some yes.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Although I'm really I'm always very cautious of that because
I don't usually enjoy origin stories because they are the
moment when you see a character you already know doing
the thing that they do really well badly because they're
learning to do it. And so Smiley is already an
established spy in this book, Carla is already an established spy.
(24:40):
So we're getting backstory and hints of truth, but with
both of them part of the point of them in
the story, in the the overarching story of my father's writing,
and now these books that I'm writing into the into
the spaces, they are myster they're shadowy, and so the
(25:02):
rule I made for myself was that it's like the
the the end of Indiana Jones and the last what
is it raised the lost stuff. They put the Arc
of the Covenant in a box. They put the box
on a trolley and they wheel it into the warehouse,
and you can see industrial like magic did a kind
of a beautiful glass painting behind it, and the pools
(25:24):
of light appear to go on and on and on
for miles and miles into the distance. And there are
just hundreds of thousands, probably millions of crates in this warehouse.
And all I wanted to know as a child was
what was in the other ten millions, Like the only
thing I cared about I have never cared about. You know,
the other stuff that Indiana jiants does fine, you know,
(25:44):
some of it's enjoyable, some of it's not whatever, But
all I wanted to know was the story of those.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Other crates amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
And that's that's smiling of Carlo, just so that we're clear,
when you reveal something about either one of them, it
has to be in the context of showing that warehouse
of who they are, so that all you know when
you learn something new is that there's not enough in
what you've just learned. And the mystery just got deeper.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
I mean, your found those books were also you know,
a political critique on Britain or a social critique as well.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Is that something that you're keen to continue.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes. So the later books, the post Cold War novels,
were very overtly political, and they pointed the finger very specifically.
The Smiley books in general were, as you say, occasionally
a social critique, and they were broadly about how to
do the right thing when the impetus of the world
around you is for you to do the wrong thing.
(26:41):
They were about trying to be decent in the face
of the morally gray or the morally corrupting. And so
I've taken that very much on board and sort of
stayed in that space, which is more Noirrish than it
is demagogic or you know, but I do feel so.
(27:05):
He was also always writing books in the now. Part
of the reason that the dates in his books are
quite flexible for the most part is that they were
always intended to be today, and so they're not anchored
to specific points in history. Although they reference the Cold War,
but the tenth polls of the Cold War, which date events,
(27:28):
don't really appear in the books they have. Pigs isn't there,
Cuban missile crisis isn't there jfk assassination isn't there?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You know, so.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Instead of being overtly political, they are about finding your
way in the dark. I want to be able to
do that. Although I'm obviously writing historical fiction. I want
to be able to do that a little bit also
for now. So one of the things that I do,
(27:57):
and with Carlo's choice, one of the things I do
is tell the potty history of Hungary. Hungary is a
kind of you know, a slightly square peg round whole
country in the European Union right now? Why is it
that way? You know, if you're going to understand the
ebb and flow of the world around you, you need
to know history. And we don't really teach history of
(28:19):
anything other than the history of the UK in UK schools,
and so little bits of that and drawing people into
here is a perspective that you haven't seen before. Here
is a narrative that in the world is as central
to the people who hold it as your narrative about
your life is to you. You know, so maybe understand
the reverse angle.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
And as we come to the end of this, can
we assume that you're writing another in the series.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
You don't even have to assume we announced it the
other day. So yes, I am writing the new book,
The taper Man. Even now, when I finished this conversation,
I will be going back to my desk and to
the meeting between Control and Smiley which kicks off the
latest story.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And when can we see that? When will that be out?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Any I would guess that's next year, probably in the autumn,
but I cannot be specific because I'm not in control
of the publishing schedule.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
And I know that you will be at Bloody Scotland
alongside Mick Heron to give.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I will Lovely mech which should.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Be one of the highlights of the whole festival. Where
else can people catch you?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I'm at Capital Crime and I'm at the Thietsman's Festival.
I think is there anywhere else?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
List on the John leccarry website of where I will be.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Brilliant, so people can look that up and find out
where Nick is going to be, because I'm sure you know,
if this is anything to go by, when you when
you're interviewed by proper people, that's going to be a
fascinating conversation. Right well, I know what can I say
that brings us to the end of another episode.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
If you've enjoyed the show, please do.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Tune in, tell your friends, leave messages on your favorite
podcast app, and.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Please do spread the word now.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Vassiam Cahn, if we were going to be on the
curriculum for the uk A level syllables or whatever it is,
what kind of fiction do you think we would be writing?
Speaker 5 (30:28):
What would you write to beyond that syllables?
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Well, I think we should write a romanticy because apparently
everybody everybody's writing romanticies at this moment.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
I think you're right. Romance. Ancy is the way forward.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Romance.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
I actually see you doing more of something like a
five year old book and ABC something like that.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
You know, party training. How about that party training. We
could get you to do concitrant authors, and I.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Could get you to do the illustrations with with your crayons, but.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
I have to write my books with them. Nick, it's
been an absolute pleasure having you on. Ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for tuning in. We have been your friends.
The Red Hot Chili Writers on Murder Junction
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