In an age of one-minute reads and communicating through emojis and limited characters, do you think young people are less likely to stick with a 600-page book in the way they did with The Book Thief? Social media and smart phones have progressed a lot in the last decade or so. I’ll just try to keep doing what I’m doing, which is to write from the inside out, and then hope it finds an audience. What I love is stories, and books, and it wouldn’t really serve me or readers well if I started categorising before I even start writing something. I think I just see myself writing exactly the kind of stories that are calling to me, and then leave it up to readers to decide if it’s the sort of thing they want to read.

Do you think your stories will continue to age with your audience or do you see yourself returning to YA fiction? It’s your first book for adults so you’ll be bringing a lot of your past readers with you. In that way, it feels natural to encounter hard times in the process – but it’s also what makes it all worth it.

Well, there was a fair bit of failure for a long time, but I remind myself now that it’s because I’m always trying to write above myself – to write better than I actually am. He has a surprising request: who will build a bridge with him? Bridge of Clay is the first book in 13 years from the author of international bestseller, The Book Thief.īridge of Clay has been 13 years in the making. Now, the father who left them has just walked right back in. Five Dunbar brothers are living – fighting, loving, grieving – in the perfect chaos of a house without grown-ups.

Bridge of clay author