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'I want to do this until I die'

11 October 2010

'If you write truthfully about human life, by which I mean the human heart and how it interacts with the world, you don't have to strive for contemporary relevance. If a book like Wolf Hall meant nothing today, we would not have got past page two.

The essence of 'we' is universal and no different to two hundred years from now, if it's truthful to the human experience. How that 'we' is pummelled and moulded is locally determined. The corruption of the Dutch East India Company is the same as the corruption at Enron.

The ideas I will tend to choose for novels are ones that least resemble books I have already written. My curiosity leads me to choose different types of books to write. I rather encourage this trait because it's the best way I can see of avoiding the condition of writing endless versions of the same novel, which can lead to premature artistic death.'

On the Man Booker nomination, third-time around? 'What? Do I want to win? I felt honoured and pleased (by the nomination), but it's the guy who approached me to tell me his wife reads Cloud Atlas once a year that I think is just so great. If I had to choose one out of the two, I'd choose the man. I want to do this until I die. He enables me to continue to do what I love. Prizes won't do that for you.'

David Mitchell, author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet in the Independent