I’m just back from three weeks travelling around Italy, researching my next novel, which is why this post is a bit late. The winner of the competition (mentioned in my previous post) to design the cover for the US edition of The Island at the End of the World was announced on 25 September in New York.

It was won by an English designer called Matthew Taylor. Oddly enough, my only brother is called Matthew Taylor, and I found out about this on 22 September, which is my brother’s birthday. However, there is no nepotism involved. This Matthew Taylor is no relation to me at all.

I love the cover he designed though. At first, I must admit I thought it was quite a strange choice for that book. But having seen all 340-odd cover designs, I had to agree that the judges had made the right decision. There were some other very clever and eye-catching entries, but the boy with the head exploding into tigers, blackbirds and butterflies (you’d have to read the book to understand it) was the most unusual and original.

All in all, it was quite an awe-inspiring experience, seeing so many different visions inspired by something I wrote. If you have a spare hour, you can judge the various entries for yourself by clicking here:

I have only written three books, but already I have a gallery of covers with my name on them. Unlike CDs, where each album has one cover which will last its entire lifetime and remain the same in all territories, book covers tend to change between first edition and mass market paperback, between countries, and between reprints.

My first cover was for the first edition of The Republic of Trees - the beautiful, gothic, black-tinted photograph of an adolescent boy in a pool near a forest, designed by gray318. This was followed by the paperback version, designed by Keenan, which was similar but less striking and horror-tinged: the girl in bikini bottoms wading into a lake. I liked this cover, but wanted it bleached out so that the setting looked hot and European rather than cold and English. I didn’t get what I wanted (although they did remove the girl’s bikini top, at my request!) except in the wallpaper of this website. This cover has also been used on the Hungarian, Italian and German editions.

The final Republic of Trees cover - and probably my favourite of the three - is the Korean cover: a wildly romantic painting of a boy in a night-time forest holding the Republic’s flag. In fact, the whole book was beautifully designed and printed, with line-drawings of trees at the beginning of every chapter and the foot of every page.

I can’t give you the name of the designer because I can’t read Korean, but if he or she would like to get in contact, I’ll give them the credit their wonderful efforts deserve.

Next up was the first-edition UK cover of The Amnesiac, designed by Ghost. This cover took a long time to reach fruition. Indeed its genesis was almost as tortured and protracted as the writing of that book - very much my ‘difficult second novel’. I really liked the initial cover idea - a ghostly hand holding a melting butterfly - but the execution was tricky, and when we finally got it the way I wanted, we were forced by the owners of the photograph to change it back because they didn’t want the image manipulated. Some people love this cover, but I have to confess I’m not one of them.

I had no control whatsoever over the cover of the paperback UK edition of Amnesiac, designed in-house at Faber. Again, I liked the idea (a smashed mirror) quite a lot, but the details - particularly the stubble and eyelashes on the guy’s face - I found repellent rather than attractive. I didn’t have any input on the French cover of L’Amnésique either, but was happier with this. It’s a photograph of little plastic figures in a plastic labyrinth. Again, I preferred the idea to the execution, but it’s a cool, clever, simple image.

My favourite Amnesiac cover by a long way, however, is the US edition - the man staring at a derelict house, under a Victorian streetlamp, with papers falling to the pavement (see image below) - designed and illustrated by Julie Morstad. This, to me, really conveys the spirit of the book – which is both gothic and romantic, alienated and filled with yearning. It’s a truly beautiful cover, probably my favourite of all the covers I’ve had.

Although it will be run close by the UK cover to The Island at the End of the World, below, which is both simple and wonderfully right.

I don’t know what the French cover of L’Ile au Bout du Monde will be like, but I am looking forward to seeing the US cover – as it’s the subject of a cover art competition, sponsored by Creativity Magazine, open to artists all over the world. The winner will be announced on 25 September, and – if I’m allowed – I’ll publish the best images here.

The UK paperback of The Amnesiac (above) comes out on 3rd April.

The US edition of The Amnesiac (above) will be published by Penguin in July this year. The same month will see the German translation of The Republic of Trees - ‘Die Republik der Bäume’ - published by DTV.

The French translation of The Amnesiac - ‘L’Amnésique’ - will be published by Seuil at the beginning of September.

The hardback edition of my third novel, The Island at the End of the World, will be published by Faber on 22 January 2009.

I’m working on two new books at the moment. In the mornings I’m writing a children’s book - the first I’ve ever done. In the afternoons and evenings I’m researching my next novel, which is set in Renaissance Italy.

In between the morning’s writing and the afternoon’s reading, I go cycling every day. I’m recuperating from a knee operation, so it’s partly a medical necessity, but it’s also the best way I’ve found of clearing my head and letting the ideas flow.

I’m very excited about the historical novel, but the kids’ book is an enjoyable release, and so far it’s going well. Sixty pages down, about forty to go. I decided to write it when, reading Roald Dahl’s ‘James & the Giant Peach’ to my sons (who are aged 8, 10 and 12) one night, the youngest asked me why didn’t I write a book like this? I promised him I’d give it a go.

When the first draft is done, I’ll read it to my kids. If they’re not hanging on my every word, I’ll know it still needs work…

I’ve just moved into the attic of our house. Before, in the office where I wrote the first three books, I used to look out on to the garden; now, I can see over two cornfields, a river, a farm, and a line of wooded hills. Will the view inspire a different kind of book?

The Italian edition of The Republic of Trees (La Repubblica degli alberi) comes out this month on Neri Pozza. This follows the Hungarian and Korean editions, and will be followed by the publication of the novel in German sometime next year.

The paperback edition of The Amnesiac will be published in April next year (Faber).

The US edition of The Amnesiac come out next July on Penguin. The French, Russian and Turkish translations should be available next year as well.

And the UK hardback publication of my third novel, The Island at the End of the World, is slated for January 2009, again with Faber.

Well, The Amnesiac is out there now. I was in London for the launch party last week, and the story of James Purdew and his memory loss is now available in all good book shops.

It’s always weird, making that transition from something that’s haunted your mind and filled your days for more than two years, suddenly becoming a physical object which you can see on display in retail outlets in every high street in Britain.

I don’t really know how I feel about it, except to say that this is why I wrote it in the first place. Not for the launch party or the reviews… but so that people could read it. An unread book does not truly exist.

So if you’ve read The Amnesiac and have any questions or comments you’d like to make, please feel free to do so here. I’m interested to learn what you make of it.

On my first post in this blog, I offered a signed copy of the paperback of Republic of Trees to whoever came up with the best answer to the frequently asked question, ‘What the fuck is the hole all about?’

More than a year later, after much deliberation, I have decided to award the prize to Damien Lhermitte, who provided this thoughtful answer:  ‘After having read “The Republic of Trees” several times, I think I might have an answer to the question WTFTHIAA!! I think it’s Michael’s other self, his reason calling him from his own mind.’

There is no right answer to this question, so other interpretations are not ruled out, but Damien’s response is certainly the closest anyone’s come to articulating, in a single line, what was in my mind when I wrote that chapter.

A signed copy is on its way to Brussels now…

i fractured my right wrist on friday night, playing football. that follows two cracked ribs earlier this year. i also broke my left wrist last summer, while i was finishing my second novel, the amnesiac, which begins with the protagonist breaking his ankle one summer in amsterdam. not only that, but i am about to write an article about the weekend 12 years ago when i really did break my ankle in amsterdam, and came back to discover my girlfriend was pregnant.

so what is this? life imitating art imitating life? the influence of the stars? divine retribution? or just sheer random bad luck? i don’t know, but typing one-handed is tiring and laborious - so that’s the end of this entry.

Ever since the bound proofs of The Amnesiac were sent out to a select group of authors, publishers and critics a few weeks ago, I have, naturally, been bombarded with questions from major media agencies and television companies. Well, all right, that’s not true. But I was approached by a strange man the other day who insisted on asking me the following questions. Just to help you along, his name was Q and mine is A.

Q: When and why did you begin writing?
A: At Pilgrim Oak infant school, sometime in the mid-1970s. I seem to remember the teachers made me do it.

Q: What inspired you to write your first book?
A: Staring at a distant clump of woodland. And not having any other source of income.

Q: Who or what has influenced your writing?
A: Books, dreams, memories, intense physical feelings… basically, everyone and everything I’ve encountered in my life.

Q: Do you have a specific writing style?
A: No. I like changing and experimenting with style.

Q: What genre(s) are you most comfortable writing?
A: My first book was a fairytale/horror story. My second is a sort of philosophical detective story. And my third is, in a way, science fiction. Yet they’re all classified as literary fiction. I like genre fiction a lot, except that, on the whole, the writing isn’t good enough. Similarly, I like literary fiction, except that, on the whole, the stories aren’t very exciting. What I’m trying to do is combine the two. And no, I don’t mean bad writing and boring stories.

Q: How did you come up with the title of The Amnesiac?
A: I can’t remember.

Q: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
A: Not a message exactly, at least not in a moralistic sense. There are lots of ideas in there, though, about memory and existence, hope and fear, heaven and hell, pubs and psychology, Philip Larkin and Jorge Luis Borges. There are also some handy (and hard-won) hints on how to be happy. If there is a message, I suppose it’s that memory doesn’t really exist. To quote the Czech philosopher Tomas Ryal, ‘Memory is eight parts forgetting to two parts daydreaming.’ Most people, I think, put way too much faith in their memories.

Q: How much of the book is autobiographical?
A: To quote the book itself: ‘Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Yeah, right. What a stupid phrase that is. Actual persons are entirely coincidental! Life is entirely coincidental! What you want to know is: are you reading a work of fiction or a true story? Well, let’s put it this way. There is no such thing as a true story. These are, you might say, the memoirs of an amnesiac, but so are all memoirs. I could write my life story a thousand times and it would never be the same and it would never be ‘true to life’. Why? Because memory itself is a fiction: we are, second by second, in every moment of reflection, self-editing, reinventing, making ourselves up. On the other hand, if I write it, then it is by definition my story. It may not be wholly ‘true’, but it cannot be wholly false either. No work of fiction has yet been written which contains not a glimpse, a reflection (however distorted) of the author’s life and experiences. All novels are, to some extent, romans-à-clef; only, in most cases, the key does not quite fit the lock, or the door is double-bolted, or it opens on to a corridor full of other, locked doors. Or, to use a different metaphor, a fiction is not a web of lies, with the truth, still squirming and alive, at its centre; in a fiction, truth and lies are spun together, inseparable, in the same slender thread of silk. What the web catches is a matter of chance’.

Q: The book’s not very realistic, is it?
A: No, but neither is reality.

Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
A: Undoubtedly. But please don’t make me do it all over again!

Q: What are your current projects?
A: I’m writing my third novel. It’s called The Island at the End of the World.

Q: Can you share a little of your current work with us?
A: It’s set on an island. In the near future. I don’t think I should say any more than that for the moment.

Q: Who are your favorite authors and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
A: Borges, Kafka, Camus, Calvino, Gogol, Stevenson, Dostoyevsky, Fowles, Murakami, Ishiguro, Philip K Dick, John Franklin Bardin, Rupert Thomson, early Iain Banks and Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem… there are lots of others, but those are the ones that came off the top of my head. What strikes me about their work is the intense reality of their utterly ‘unrealistic’ worlds, plus an almost childlike fascination with life and/or books. And they all write/wrote good stories, of course.