1. How would you describe your new book, The Village is Quiet?

It’s a collection of short stories written between 2002 and 2021. The stories relate to experiences in my wife Lenka’s village of birth in eastern Slovakia.

2. Tell us a bit about the experience of writing this book…

Over a period of nearly 20 years I became immersed in village and family life over there. The writing happened in small notebooks, in which I compiled observations in a similar way to how I was observing the scenes around me through drawing. Writing in response to this place was and continues to be a way of recording – they’re a bit like what an anthropologist might call ‘notes from the field’, only without any purpose attached to the specific fragments I am collecting.

3. You’re perhaps best known as an artist. What prompted you to start writing?

The village prompted me to start writing. The stories were a natural response to spending long periods of time in a compelling and very foreign environment. It wasn’t really a deliberate attempt to write a book. In 2007-08 I made a much smaller collection of stories that accompanied an exhibition by the same name and these stories expanded into the book.

4. What do you hope readers will take from this book?

A sense of a place and belonging that is very different to the urban Western example.

5. One thing you’ve learned the hard way when it comes to writing?

That there’s a lot of crap – habit, volition, identity – to wade through before arriving at the essence of an experience. Writing for me is about shedding or letting go of all this, which doesn’t always happen easily.

6. Where do you write?

Nowhere in particular. Today I am writing in a café but I rarely do this.

7. Favourite bookshop anywhere in the world?

The bookshops I have appreciated the most are in cold places during periods of solo travel, in cities like Krakow and Prague.

The Village is Quiet is now available in bookshops across Australia and New Zealand or buy it online here.