Questions by Peter Bocsor

Nick, you come from a Hungarian immigrant family, tell us a few words about your family background.

Like many Hungarians, my parents came to Britain as refugees following the revolution in 1956. My father was working for the radio so they had to leave but the family was split in two. After a period in a refugee camp, they settled in London, where I was born.

Did your father, also a writer and a journalist, influence your career?

I grew up watching my father hunched over a typewriter in an impossibly smoke-filled study surrounded by books. Even before I was aware of what he was doing or why, I had the blueprint for a self-employed writer in my head. I also remember being fascinated by his desk, its complex layers of notes and papers, and its drawer, which was full of strange objects such as a printer’s ruler and a copyright stamp. Later, I realised where my self-motivation and discipline came from, not to mention my nicotine habit. The other big influence was his attitude to research, the way in which a book could develop from nothing more than a note on a scrap of paper.

Can you see any differences between your and his language that may derive from first- and second-generation experiences?

The language of my novels, the use of contemporary slang and dialogue, is very different from his work. But growing up with two languages or a hybrid of both – Hunglish – is something that definitely opened my ears to the linguistic possibilities.

Your three novels, Curvy Lovebox, Crumple Zone and Hooky Gear are labelled as parts of a “loose trilogy”. What does that mean?

The label came from me and was really meant to suggest similarities of approach and theme, rather than connections of plot and character, which there aren’t. All three novels, as well as some short stories that I’ve written, are narrated in the first person in the present tense. In other words, they are written as spoken, blending monologue and dialogue, and they’re all set in the ‘underbelly’ of contemporary London. All three involve central characters who are waking up to themselves for the first time.

What are the differences in terms of focus among the novels?

Curvy Lovebox, the first novel, concerns 24 hours in the life of a petty North London hoodlum. Crumple Zone is narrated by a young female teacher whose brother goes missing. Hooky Gear is about a burglar whose life comes apart. Each character is forced to confront who and what he or she is, and each is set against a backdrop of disaffected, and often deeply alienated, urban males. Each also blends the black humour of the big city, moments of slapstick and elements of the noir thriller. But each character also finds their own route to change, their own path and resolution. One of the things I tried to do was not only to represent the individuality of the characters’ language but also to give each text its own visual appearance to match it.

Some of your critics praise you for an “ear for slang”, others claim you write in an “invented argot”. How do invention and authenticity relate to each other?

Slang is invention. It comes about spontaneously, from the natural combustion that takes place in the street or in a classroom when people come together and create, from nothing, a new word or phrase. Authenticity is partly about transcribing the spoken word, taking it from someone’s mouth and finding a way of putting it on the page. On the other hand, a writer is part of the process and I’ve always felt free to invent.

The vernacular people use in your books reflects a very colourful ethnic background but the reader has to guess the ethnicity of the characters. Why is that?

That’s true, and it’s deliberate. I wanted the focus to be on language and gender, rather than race. Contemporary culture seems preoccupied with race, when social circumstance, class and gender are often the key connections between them.

Why do you write in the first person?

What I’m hoping to do is to force a reader to see things as the narrator sees them, to know no more or less than the narrator knows, and to force readers who might otherwise be unfamiliar with the characters to live inside their heads, at least for the duration of the story. To me, the joy of reading has often come about when I’ve been forced to look into a wholly new world, a new mindset with its own reference points.

What would you suggest to a translator of your novels?

Some people have said the novels are untranslatable but every language has its edges, its margins, where standard and non-standard meet, where new words are invented reflecting social or other changes. There are plenty of complex, unusual or difficult novels that have been translated and I think it’s more about finding someone with the right ear.

London is often in the centre of your fictive worlds. Why do you give detailed directions of the routes the characters take?

We all create our own mental maps of the places we inhabit. One person’s London is totally alien to someone else. Mood, emotion, desire, motivation, habit and even the speed at which you move can all conspire to remap the city. With specific reference to places, I’ve tried to make the familiar unfamiliar, to give the reader a new perspective on the environment they thought they knew. Each character has his or her own way of seeing the London that surrounds, and it’s not the London of tourist packages.

What experiences did you gather during your visit to Hungary?

Remapping London is, in a way, similar to remapping my inherited view of Hungary. Although I’ve been to Hungary many times, each occasion has opened new avenues, new ways of thinking about the country my parents left. On this occasion, engaging with lecturers, teachers, students, schoolkids and the diverse members of audiences from Budapest to Nyíregyháza, and from Veszprém to Szeged, has broadened my perception of the country’s people and its literature, a process that I very much hope will continue.