Interviews

John Lucas chats to Iman Qureshi about his debut novel Turf - a hard-hitting chronicle of East London's Blake Street Boyz

Poet Ben Lerner turned to fiction recently with the experimental mediation on the life of a writer lost in a foreign land. Leaving Atrocha Station is a quiet, poetic work of compelling beauty and power. We spoke to Ben about 'thisness' in fiction, experimentation and what exactly is the 'anti-novel novel'.

We interviewed Shehan Karunatilaka, author of the award-winning novel Chinaman, about unreliable narrators, cricketing glory and playing in bands.

We talked to Nikita Lalwani about writing The Village,her second novel, about her humanitarian work and her experiences visiting an open prison herself.

Aharon Appelfeld won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for the book Blooms of Darkness along with his translator, Jeffrey M Green (an interview with him will appear next week). We spoke to him the day after his win.

Even Matías Néspolo thought that Seven Ways to Kill a Cat might be untranslatable. It's so full of lunfardo, the rough slang of Buenos Aires, and so deeply rooted in the villas miserias, the shanty towns that surround the city. Ellen Hallsworth talks to Néspolo about new writing in Spanish, Moby Dick and the problem with happy endings.

Mara MacSeoinin talks to Andrea Eames, the author of the chilling The White Shadow, about her super-organised existence, writing in different voices and the conflict that forced her family to flee Zimbabwe.

So much has been written about London, from Dickens to Ackroyd to Monica Ali to Patrick Hamilton and on and on and more and more. Craig Taylor, the brilliantly funny author of A Million Tiny Plays About Britain has taken on the task of the definitive state of the nation (city). He has interviewed people from all walks of life, from economic migrants to middle-class poshos to refugees to tourists to artists, and everyone you can think of, in order to write Londoners, one of the most authentic books about London.

We spoke to Craig, a jetsetting Canadian, about coming to London, who writes the best London and his sporting motto.

The music biography is a stalwart of non-fiction books. Everyone wants to know the stories behind the songs, what inspired the musicians and where they came from. Colin Grant's I&I: The Natural Mystics is one such book, telling the story of the Wailers, of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - placing their lives and music in a socio-political backdrop, exploring their relationships with each other and with Jamaica. All to the backdrop of sweet, sweet reggae music. We talked to Colin about writing the book, about music and about working on non-fiction projects.

Ellen Hallsworth talks to Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos about his novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, narrowly winning the Guardian First Book Award and his relationship with his translator.