Last year I read both Enard's Compass and Matar's The Return. Both books have stayed with me. The questions posited in these books seem not just to be bleeding into my writing, but also how I continue to live in the world, live with absence, and curiosity. Questions that are now all the more difficult to reconcile with my having shifted writing bases to Malmö in Sweden. I shuttle back and forth as I am continuing my promotional duties in the UK, mostly London. I live between cities. Between voices.

Here, Enard and Matar talk about Compass's translation into English by the brilliant Charlotte Mandel. Language, (Enard is a polyglot), the so-called Orient and the Occident, curiosity and art.