This Q & A first appeared here in The Guardian: How did you come to write The Devil’s Garden? Some years ago, I stayed on a river station on the Amazon with some very odd people. Later, in one of the river towns, a woman told me a story about an anthropologist who disappeared…
1. How did you research the Devil’s Garden? Do you feel that visiting a place you are writing about is crucial for an author? Personally, I find that there is no substitute for going to a place if you want to write about it. The word ‘author’ is quite close to the word ‘authenticity’…
In Conversation with Picador: 1. Can you summarise The Devil’s Garden in fifty words? It is about love and corruption and ancient tribes and violence and grief and sex and science and religion and ants and anthropology and the clash between the individual and the big opposing forces of the twenty-first century. Most of all it’s about…
This first appeared in The Guardian: Edward Docx’s first novel, The Calligrapher, was published to widespread acclaim in 2003 and has now been translated into eight languages. His second novel, Self Help, published in 2007, was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and went on to win The Geoffrey Faber prize. In 2003 and…