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
faced great pretending
I'm a novelist: I spend a great part of my day pretending to myself that I'm in a different world, being a different person, faced with decisions I pretend I haven't created.
fellow human imagine peace people vital
I'm an irredeemable urbanite. I can't imagine living more than a five-minute walk from my fellow human beings. Other people are vital to my peace of mind.
ask aspire funny great line mine
If you ask who I aspire to, well, if a single line of mine was as funny as P. G. Wodehouse can be, that would be great.
britain collective fraction human imperial power ruling span stable surface tumultuous within
In the span of a human lifetime, and well within the collective memory, Britain went from a stable imperial power ruling an appreciable fraction of the Earth's surface to being a tumultuous patchwork which was at least superficially in decline.
britain instead might nostalgic understanding
We don't need to chase a nostalgic rendering of Britain as it never was and never can be: we need instead an understanding of who we really are and what a happy, prosperous, just nation might look like.
commercial dvds huge overall produce scale
We need to differentiate between commercial piracy - where criminal organisations produce illicit DVDs on a huge scale - and domestic, unauthorised filesharing, which may or may not be detrimental to overall sales.
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.
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.