It amazes me how often I get asked this, and it always makes me smile. Yes, Guy Saville is my real name.

I’m lucky enough to have a separate office at home, at the far end of my garden, where I work. On a typical day I start around 7.30am and work till 1pm, when I stop for lunch and to listen to The World at One on Radio 4. The afternoon is usually for errands or the gym, and very occasionally some time off. I then get back to work around 5.30pm. During the early stages of a book I’ll work another couple of hours but as I get closer to the end I work more intensely, and I’m regularly at my desk till midnight.

In terms of how I put a book together, my preference is to plan extensively and not start the actual writing until I’ve worked out the entire plot (this can take up to a year). As a general rule I don’t write in order, so will start a quarter of the way in through the book, write a chapter… then jump back a couple of chapters… then go forward half a dozen and so on. The book doesn’t take its final form till very late in the process. This is true down to the level of the page – so I’ll start a paragraph mid-sentence, then write something ten lines down before jumping to the top of the page. I seem unable to write a book simply from the beginning to the end.

I tend to go through multiple drafts, usually starting again from scratch each time. Eventually, I’ll have several different versions of the book and from these I pick and choose bits to assemble a final text. I then ‘smooth out all the joins’ so it looks doesn’t look like a patchwork and give everything a polish. I realise this is not the most orthodox way to work – but it’s a system that has crept up on me over the years and which now feels entirely natural. Every time I deviate from it and try and work in a linear way, I have problems.

See ‘What Next?‘

I’ve had several approaches from film companies over the years – but no one has ever committed to the project. The main stumbling block is the size of the budget. Scenes like the train / helicopter gunship chase would be costly to stage, as would filming in Africa (or some other tropical equivalent). It’s also not exactly family viewing which limits the audience, and hence the box office return. I suppose some of the violence could be stripped away till you had a 12-rating (the preferred certificate for these type of big budgets films) – but that would be a very different film from the one I imagine. So after my initial enthusiasm to see Afrika Reich on the screen, I’ve grown less keen on the idea. Nevertheless, the rights are still available and if someone from a major Hollywood studio happens to be reading this: get in touch!

I can honestly say I’ve never really given much thought to the casting. If I imagine a film being made the thing I fantasise about is who would write the score. I think Hans Zimmer’s mix of electronic music and orchestral – not to mention his use of relentless percussion – would be the perfect match for Afrika Reich.

Given how often I’m asked this question, it’s something I’ve pondered a lot – and I’m not sure I have a satisfactory answer. On the broadest level we’re all intrigued by what-if questions and the different paths our lives may have taken: What if I’d been born a decade earlier/later? What if I’d never met my wife/husband? Etc.

To bring it back to the Nazis, I think it’s something to do with the striking visual imagery – the iconography if you will – of the Third Reich. That and the sheer grandiosity of Hitler’s schemes. The fact that the Nazis were such assiduous planners and documenters means it’s possible to create the world they imagined. We enjoy these speculations the way we enjoy horror movies: to revel in frightening ourselves. I also think there’s an element of contemplating ourselves in the mirror. The 20th Century is replete with murderous regimes, from Stalin’s Russia to the atrocities committed by the likes of Mao and Pol Pot. Yet there’s something exotic about these regimes: we can dismiss them as ‘other’, as the products of cultures different to ours. The Germans on the other hand are just like us, which prompts the question, would we have succumbed to Hitler’s plans for the world?

Despite the grandiosity of the Nazis’ plans, the most surprising thing was a bizarre, almost inconsequential detail. The SS had multiple business and economic concerns and by 1942 had become the second largest soft drinks manufacturer in the world, beaten only by Coca Cola. If the Nazis had won the war it’s probable they would have taken the top spot. It’s such an unexpected detail… and I had to sneak it in. It’s used in the first book in the scene where Burton and Patrick hide in the cellar in Stanleystadt.

I once asked Martin Amis the same question and he replied, ‘get yourself a famous father… or a literary agent’. Both still ring true! Failing that, I’m not sure anything I can say will be much help. Publishing is the most bizarre and contradictory business; nobody knows what sells and breaking in seems as much to do with luck as anything else. I’d recommend anyone who wants to be a writer to read as widely and voraciously as possible. Beyond that, the best I can offer is two pieces of advice I was given while trying to get published and which served me well. 1) What separates published writers from unpublished ones is perseverance: keep writing no matter how many set-backs 2) Write in an existing, popular genre. It’s easier to get a foot in the door that way than with the ‘classic first novel’

I receive a lot of books from publishers and friends who are writers. Add to this my own to-be-read pile (for both pleasure and research) and the fact I’m a slow reader – and I’m already overburdened! So as much as I like to help other writers, unfortunately my answer has to be no.

Other books I’ve read this year include: Stanley Kubrick and Me, Emilio D’Alessandro; The Turn of the Screw, Henry James; Dark Matter, Michelle Paver; The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson; Jonny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo; The Woman in Black & Other Ghost Stories, Susan Hill; Jaguar Smile, Salman Rushdie.

2016: The Shining by Stephen King; No Picnic on Mount Kenya, Felice Benuzzi; Hot Milk by Deborah Levy [I always try to read something on the Booker short-list every year]; The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood; The Empire of the Sun, JG Ballard; The World According to Garp, John Irving; Thérèse Raquin, Émile Zola; Time & Loneliness, Mark Cocker; The Road to Oxiana, Robert Byron; The Lonely City, Olivia Laing; On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan; If this is a Man, Primo Levi; Diary of the Fall, Michel Laub; Turner, Peter Ackroyd; How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Chris Taylor; The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan [I can’t imagine reading a better book this decade]; And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie.

2015: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth; Dictator, Robert Harris; The Year of the Runaways, Sanjeev Sahota; Sweet Caress, William Boyd; The Road to Reckoning, Robert Lautner; The Night Falling, Katherine Webb; The Listeners, Ed Parnell; The Wolf Border, Sarah Hall; Dear Thief, Samantha Harvey; Us, David Nicholls; The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters; The Accident, CL Taylor; A Kill in the Morning, Graeme Shimmin.