Marcel Möring is Holland's most famous and bestselling author. He was born in 1957 in Enschede, an industrial town near the Dutch-German border, In A Dark Wood is his fifth novel.

Mark Thwaite: What first gave you the idea for writing In A Dark Wood?

Marcel Möring: My best fiend is a photographer and he, young and unmarried, was deemed the right person to cover the night before the races for a local newspaper. I accompanied him as both his mule and his bodyguard. In the early 1980's we covered the night that I used for IADW. It was a night full of violence, booze, sex and strange meetings with unexpected people. I remember thinking, it was almost day by then and we were having a beer in a huge tent run by Moluccan friends of ours... I was thinking: this would be a great backdrop for a novel. It took me fifteen years to find out how to write a novel that would both capture the weirdness of the night before the races and the thwarted history of Assen.

Mark Thwaite: In the late sixties your family moved to Assen, a small town in north eastern Netherlands, moderately famous for its annual TT motor races. Much of the action in In A Dark Wood is set here, in Assen -- what is so fascinating about the town?

Marcel Möring: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that's fascinating, too, isn't it? What the Netherlands are about, the smallness, the insignificance, its middle class-ness (if that's a word), that's all embodied on a small scale by Assen. The petty religious and political conflicts, the social structure, the fear of strangers... Go to Assen and you'll see the whole of the Netherlands.

Mark Thwaite: What was the most difficult aspect of writing your book? How did you overcome it?

Marcel Möring: The structure, really. I had no trouble finding the voice, or voices. That was there from the beginning. And I knew I wanted the book be polyphonic. I wanted a host of voices, different voices, accents, voices that were expressions of social, political and historical elements. And I could write those voices. But I just couldn't find a way to turn them into a polyphonic yet coherent texture without writing a 19th century novel of the kind that the Russians would have written. And then I remembered what I wanted when I started writing, when I was 17 or so. I was, in my teens, infatuated by modernism, the modernist novel: from James Joyce to Max Frisch. And that gave me the idea to write the novel as a kind of modernism 2.0, as a tribute to the wealth that the early 20th century novel has brought us.

Mark Thwaite: History looms large in your books, Marcel. Do you do a lot of research for your novels?

Marcel Möring: I have to. I'm a bit anal when it comes to facts, even if they're not at all critical. I've learned to read meteorological stats from the 1950s, I've read extensively about the shoe industry, about corsets and bras and... Praise the internet. Without it I would have spent months in dusty archives. And then there's all kinds of people who kindly assisted me and provided specialized information on historical subjects, the art of corsetry...

Mark Thwaite: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

Marcel Möring: Both in longhand and on the computer. I always carry a pack of index cards for making notes and I keep a bizarre collection of notebooks, most of which are only partially filled. But I start at 9 o'clock in the morning on the computer, work till 12, do my shopping and cooking, to return at about 8. I usually keep on working till 12 at night. As the work on the book progresses I print ever bigger amounts of paper. Then the work shifts to working on the print-outs. They get filled with sentences, paragraphs, chapters sometimes. Then back to the computer, to transfer my notes, new prints, etcetera, etcetera. Once the book is finished I spend a day or two shredding the prints. IADW took a toll on the environment. I produced roughly 15.000 printed pages. By then the manuscript is a bit like a stone that washes up on the beach and has been polished over and over again by the sea.

Mark Thwaite: Do you know how your books will end before you begin, or is writing a journey of discovery for you?

Marcel Möring: It's strange, but I never really thought about this. But, it occurs to me, now that I always know the way a book ends. But getting there is a discovery.

Mark Thwaite: Our hero, Marcus, takes a Dante-esque journey to find his lover -- why is Dante such an inspiration?

Marcel Möring: Ah, Dante is, to me at least, where modern literature starts and the Divine Comedy is the kind of book that is a model for the ultimate book every writer would like to write. It's not just the language -I taught myself to read it in he original- but the structure also, his humour, his compassion, his complete mastery of form, shape, narrative, poetry... The Divine Comedy privided me with a road map, structure and an idea of hell that differs from Dante's, but nevertheless.

Mark Thwaite: I'm a big, big fan of Dante, but a lot of readers might think he is unapproachable -- please convince them that he isn't!

Marcel Möring: Oh, Dante's a very good read! The Divine Comedy is a buddy movie, an adventure story, social and political history. It's many books in one, really. I think people should approach The Divine Comedy lightheartedly. Skip the commentary, forget that this is a Great and Very Important Book and start reading. You'll find that it's really a wonderful immersive book.

Mark Thwaite: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with their responses to your books? Have you learned anything from them?

Marcel Möring: Well, I don't read the papers, so I don't get to see the reviews. I've been blessed in the past, when it comes to good reviews, but I don't care, really. I'm doing what I think I must do and it don't really matter what the critics think if you're that focused on your work.

Mark Thwaite: What do you do when you are not writing?

Marcel Möring: I read a lot, Barbara, my wife, and I go to museums, the ballet, concerts. But most of the time I'm at home with my wife, reading, watching dvd's, cooking...

Mark Thwaite: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

Marcel Möring: No, I don't write for an ideal reader, but Barbara reads everything I write and tells me what she thinks, so I guess she's my most important reader.

Mark Thwaite: What are you working on now Marcel?

Marcel Möring: Well, IADW is part one of a trilogy and I'm working on the next two parts now. Very different books, both in style and form.

Mark Thwaite: Aside from Dante, who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

Marcel Möring: I like, no: love, Joyce and Beckett. I really, really like Jeanette Winterson's work. Max Frisch is favourite and Patrick Modiano. And Saul Bellow and Philip Roth are great craftsmen whom I really admire. And I would like to be as smart and witty and sharp as Will Self.

Mark Thwaite: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

Marcel Möring: Write. Write every day. It takes a 100,000 words to make a writer, in the words of Norman Mailer. He was right. A sportsman trains every day, so should you, as a writer. And read. Read and imitate what you have read. Aristotle said that all arts starts with imitation. And he was right too.

Mark Thwaite: Anything else you would like to say?

Marcel Möring: I'll say it in my next book.