The new issue of the Johannesburg Review of Books is online now. The January “Conversation Issue” includes my interview with Gail Fincham for the South African Literary magazine Tydskrif vir Letterkunde – we chat my writing and forthcoming novel, Stone Plant. (In English)

Read the full interview here.

I value a destabilising sense of estrangement in writing; among other things, it is one way to approach writing about the non-human. It’s one reason why science fiction has always had value for me. The short stories I’ve been writing recently, and the new novel, edge towards the speculative, without delving into outright fantasy. I’ve often said that the space I’m interested in exploring, in classic fantasy terms, is not exactly Narnia, and perhaps not even The Wood Between the Worlds, but perhaps the wardrobe: that space of possibility, where we have the first inkling that a break in perceived reality is imminent.