Nick Harkaway
Nick Harkaway
Nick Harkawayis a novelist and commentator. He is the author of the novels The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker and Tigerman; and a non-fiction study of the digital world, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
family relationship
My family has something of a special relationship with confidence tricks: my grandfather was a professional swindler.
bit gets great second smashed
Revolutions come in two stages: the bit where everything gets smashed and the bit where you have to build it again. The first is great fun; the second is so very hard.
time work
When the time comes to work, I work.
becomes begin people studied time
I studied revolutions at university, and I think each revolution must begin with a moment of 'no.' If enough people have that moment at the same time, it becomes a movement.
boys discovered felt lots sat
I think lots of boys sat down with 'The Three Musketeers' and felt it was a really long book, but then discovered that it's a really gripping swashbuckling story.
egg habit lose peace possible remake sort state
Peace is not a state - it is a choice, and you have to remake it every day. It's possible to get a sort of stability, a habit of peace, but it's like an egg balanced, spinning, on its point: lose your momentum, and your equilibrium is gone, too.
anyone coming except home
Suddenly, the idea of writing a book was like coming home. I didn't tell anyone except my wife, Clare. I just began.
Names aren't just coathooks, they're coats. They're the first thing anyone knows about you.
capital punishment runs table topics
My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that.
history inherit
My reading of history is that we continually inherit trouble.
country entity inherited margaret
Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.
shotgun
'Gone-Away World' was a shotgun blast, an explosion out of the box I'd put myself into writing film scripts. 'Tigerman' is shorter, tighter, more crafted.
knowledge power
Knowledge is not just power - it is control.
admittedly casual center clearly comedic draft drives extremes needless novel panicked parental pregnant relaxed tender time wrote
I wrote the first draft of 'Tigerman' while my wife was pregnant - needless to say, I was relaxed and casual about her well-being during this tender time - and the novel clearly has its center in that panicked parental desperation that accompanies a first child and in the admittedly comedic extremes to which it drives us.