Hannah Kent

I still don't know why, exactly, but I do think people can have a spiritual connection to landscape, and I certainly did in Iceland. ”

I don't like to pretend I was guided in any way by the supernatural world, but the more you talk about that, the easier it is to dismiss those notions. ”

I had expected that at some point during the first draft a light would go on, and I would understand, finally, how to write a book. This never happened. The process was akin to blindly walking in the dark, feeling my way only by touch, and only recognising dead ends when I smacked into them. ”

My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories. ”