Do you think Cheeta has replaced practising his Oscar speech for a Man Booker Prize acceptance speech?
I wanted to start the novel with that speech – its first line is the opening of Kafka’s ape story ‘A Report to an Academy’. But Cheeta’s speech provokes a riot, and besides, he’s dead: so probably not, on the whole. The Man Booker Prize website attracts a lot of readers who are budding novelists. Although this is your first novel – and it’s been extraordinarily well received – you have also been a ghost-writer, a TV script writer and so on. In hindsight, what advice can you give writers about getting their novel published? You could adapt Everett Sloane in Citizen Kane: “It’s no trick to get your novel published – if all you wanna do is get your novel published.” I wouldn’t presume to advise anyone. What do you say: ‘Give everything’? ‘Write well’? A friend of mine was once having trouble with an agent, and she asked Will Self about it. His advice: “Don’t ever forget that you’re on your own in this game.” That sounds about right. There really isn’t much you can say – all the advice you
