• Tell me about the process of writing. In what particular ways do you immerse yourself in the world to write a novel?

Wassmo: Well, I think travel is very important, it’s an expanding experience. Coming to India, so different from Norway, I felt the smallness of my own voice. I find bits and pieces of my stories as I go along. On this very visit, I took elaborate notes in Agra, but lost the notebook. I think it was a lesson for me, to remember the things that really mattered, to absorb experience fully.

Vaage: I really enjoy trying on different lives. In two novels, I have written about a pianist. You don’t need experience to take on anything, you can imagine situations, lives. Writing a novel is really the triumph of the dilettante.

• You’re both poets as well. How does this reflect in your fiction?

Wassmo: Language means a lot to me. I take three years to write a novel and then spend 8-9 months editing it, polishing the language. I need it to become like music, have a rhythm. And dialogue is crucial, getting the sound of conversation to be pitch-perfect.

Vaage: I also pay a lot of attention to the rhythm, speed, and sound. Like with Cows where I used short sentences and steady rhythms to bring it close to music. The language must be beautiful.

• If writing is ‘a raid on the inarticulate’, then translating that, rearticulating, seems almost as daunting in a different way. How do you feel about the act of translation, since you, Mr Vaage, have been on both sides of it?

... contd.