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Sixty seconds with Tom Rob Smith...
Tom Rob Smith started out as a writer on soaps such as Family Affairs -- and wrote Cambodia's first soap. His debut novel Child 44, set in 1950s Russia, has won the CWA Steel Dagger, has been longlisted for the Booker Prize and Ridley Scott has bought the film rights.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
Smith: That particular skill – reducing stories to a one-line pitch and capturing someone in a single stage direction – is often put on a pedestal by screenplay writers. I kind of like the freedom of using two sentences. Or even three.
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
Smith: I have no idea.
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Smith: An astronaut, I thought space was where all the best stories took place.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
Smith: Someone called Neville: I’ve known him since I was eight. We were very good friends, then we weren’t friends and now we’re very good friends again. His earliest memory of our friendship was of me persuading him there was a jumbo jet fitted with a swimming pool in existence. I don’t remember the lie but it sounds like the kind of thing I used to make up.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
Smith: I’d be allowed to take two records to my desert island.
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
Smith: Books are so personal. It doesn’t make much sense to wish I’d written, say, a Graham Greene novel. Wishing to write as wonderfully as other writers, I do that all the time.
RTE: What makes you angry?
Smith: I’m a very calm person.
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
Smith: Henry Alexander, Richard Sinclair, Katherine Carver, Anne Goldman, Simon Reed.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Smith: Someone who snores.
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
Smith: I love stories.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
Smith: London is a great place to live. But I’ve lived in other places and they were great too.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
Smith: It’s a follow up to CHILD 44 and it’s very, very exciting.
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