Markus Zusak: From The Book Thief to Three Wild Dogs
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Leila Ismail. Our guest today is Markus Zusak. He is the internationally best-selling author of The Book Thief, which was published nearly 20 years ago and has since become a beloved classic.

He discusses his writing career so far and his latest book, Three Wild Dogs and the Truth, a memoir over a decade in the making and his most personal work yet. Joining Zusak in conversation is researcher and writer Adam McCauley. Let's join Adam now with more. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm your host, Adam McCauley. Today, I have the immense pleasure of welcoming Marcus Zusak to the show.

Marcus will be known to many as the author of the international bestseller, The Book Thief, in addition to books I Am the Messenger and Bridge of Clay. His stories, which have captivated readers around the world, have been daring and at least at times dark. But what keeps them aloft and readers turning their pages is Marcus's commitment to language, its power and its poetry, and amidst even the worst of circumstances, a kind of stubborn humanity.

Today, Marcus joins us to discuss his latest and first nonfiction book, Three Wild Dogs and the Truth.

Marcus, welcome to Intelligence Squared. Thanks Adam. Nice introduction and thanks for having me. So the first question many will ask and assuredly have is where the idea and motivation for Three Wild Dogs came from. As a departure in form from your previous work, I wonder if you could just tell us a little about the origin story. Yeah, I think it's when sometimes people just tell you, you've got to write this.

And in my case, people have been telling me, oh, you've got to write about your dogs quite a few times over the last decade and a half. And mostly my wife, actually, and she can take a lot of credit for this. And when our first dog died, she said, oh, you've got to write about Ruben. He had such an epic story.

kind of life and write it for yourself, write it for him, but also you just don't want to forget these stories. I've said to someone, a friend of mine who lost his 16 or 17 year old dog, he only told me a couple of days ago that he lost the dog and he said, "Oh, I'm trying to write it down. I can't write. I'm not a good writer." I said, "That doesn't matter."

Half the time, neither am I. I said, but humans remember so many things, but they don't remember everything. So make sure you write it down. And he said, yeah, I'm absolutely going to do that. So the origin story was exactly that. It was when one dog died, then the second dog died, and then we had a third dog come into our lives. And he was the conduit to write the story because he

I have a lot of problems starting a book and you have all these false starts and I like the idea that you've got all these attempts that didn't quite work and then something happens that pulls you back into it. And in this case, it was the third dog. And I think when I started writing this book before, because I had made certain attempts at it, several attempts and they didn't quite work.

And you're just thinking, "It's for another day. It's for another day." And what I realized is I just didn't have the voice. And the way I often describe it is it's like there are all these volcanoes hanging around you and there are all these little fires within them, but just not quite the right one to set it all off. And in this case, it was having our third dog, Frosty, come into our lives and such an innocent name, but he was definitely a wild dog and he was,

just certain moments that I had with him and I went, "Oh, that's how you write it." In your book, which is amazing and quite captivating, you take us into your life, both as a writer and as a father, and perhaps most comedically as a pet owner. And I wonder if you could just give us a quick sketch of the Motley crew. Across this book, you've got two dogs and three cats.

I wonder if you could take us and the reader inside that house and give us the cast of characters, at least in brief. Yeah, I mean, what I might do is start with the humans. So I've got Mika, my wife, and my two kids, Kitty and Noah. And we're what we describe as animal people, but within that sub-personality.

the subcategory would be that we're dog people, but we had started with having two cats and then, you know, we brought Ruben, this particular dog who was sort of hyena-like or sort of described him. It was like the first metaphor that I ever heard in my life was it's raining cats and dogs. And I sort of liked the idea of, yeah, but what if there's just a massive cyclone or hurricane and it delivers just one dog?

Or worse than that, it just washes out of the mountainside and out of the mud climbs this dog. He was a kind of mythical creature and a great animal and I think the spirit animal of our family. And then, so the cats were called Bijou and Brutus. And...

And they, you know, one of them ruled the house, even ruled the dogs. And one of them was a bit scared of the dogs. And within that pattern, then we brought Archer, who was also a street dog. And he was like...

Marilyn Monroe on a downer and you know he just was so beautiful and yet you can you see it had a really scarred life and so yeah that you know and our children grew up with these like surrounded by these animals and even just little things like saying to them even now so what's the number one skill to know when it comes to any animal you see whether it's a wild animal or someone's pet

And even now, you know, they sort of roll their eyes a bit and they say the number one thing is to know where to leave them alone. And so it's just this one. And so we just had all sorts of,

great, terrible, amazing, tragic, glorious moments within our lives. And that's how my kids grew up. And I still hold to this memory of my three-year-old daughter at the time walking this big beast of a dog. And I'd be walking him and then I'd say to the dog, I mean, he wasn't Einstein, but he was pretty intelligent.

And I'd say to him, "Hey, Rube, Kitty's walking in now." And I just loved that this big dog would turn around, look and go, "All right, I've got it." And then he'd slow his walking pace to match hers. And so, you know, this is the same dog who didn't necessarily recognise Noah, our son, as human when we brought him home from hospital and lunged at him as if he's like, "I think that brought me home lunch."

And so people have often said, we had a couple of moments where people said,

you've got to get rid of these dogs. And we would just know that they're part of our soul and it's up to us to get this right. I mean, I love that anecdote about Ruben and Kitty. I think an act that most of us would recognize as one of love, even if, you know, as you say, Ruben might not have been the most intelligent of dogs. He certainly knew how to care for those that he cared about, which I think is quite a telling element in that story.

I think one of the challenges here is there's a strong urge to allegorize the stories that you capture in the book. But one of the themes that I at least wanted to bring out, because I think it echoes through many of these stories, is that these dogs for you are bridges into the physical world. And I wonder as a writer who works

perhaps mostly alone in that solitary intellectual communion with the page. I wonder if that argument of them as being your bridge into, you know, let's call it the real world more or less is accurate. Does that resonate? And then maybe if you could just tell us a little bit of...

where those dogs took you and what they showed you, the places that they may have led you to, whether it was physically or mentally over the years from your memory. Yeah, I often say that they were kind of mirrors to my own inner turmoils and also an attraction to chaos. And I think as humans, we're attracted to chaos

and the idea that that's actually where our stories are, our best stories are. After all, why do we do these things? Why do we take in, whether it's a purebred dog or whether it's a cat or any kind of animal, or why do we have children? Or why do we take on more work than we should? Why do we coach an unruly football team? And I've done all of those things. And there were times when I absolutely regretted it.

in all of those stories that I've met or those ideas that I've mentioned. And so I think that's the first part of it is that we all claim to want control and order in our lives, but then we also want something visceral as well.

And I think we want a bit of mess because, you know, that's kind of without hopefully sounding tweeze, that we're going to find something of ourselves within that. Not even the idea of coming out the other side, but kind of while we're there. And so ideas of the physical world, like one story that doesn't even, that didn't even make it into the book is that, you know,

our new dog, who, you know, he has a penchant, he's got a, he's definitely got a hunting gene in him. And so I've been down on remote beaches down here in Australia where I've literally pulled him off kangaroos and

It's that it's, and it's one of those things where you come back along the beach and you go, Oh my God, is that my stride at full, at full sprint? And so just that, like, and so to get back to the question of, you know, taking you to

yeah, ideas of the physical world. And yeah, when you see, you know, there are hard truths and I think as well, what even just talking about that now is, yeah, there are certain incidents obviously that happen in the book where I'm sort of not questioning, but starting to understand my relationship to these animals, their relationship to other animals and where that all fits in. And I'm really conscious of,

not lecturing or not having these ideals about being an animal lover and all of that because it's pretty tricky. And we wrestle as well in our family with the idea of what we eat. You know, you claim to be an animal lover. I mean, even last night, we had a bit of an argument when there was a cockroach in our house. And my attitude to cockroaches is, I mean, I didn't know I was going to go on this tangent. I'm sorry. But my attitude to cockroaches is essentially, look,

I'm gonna help them out a bit if I can because you know they're just trying to make their way in the world. You know, they're just trying to make an honest buck.

you know is how they're just doing what they do and so my idea is you've got to let them outside and yeah so this idea of you know when it comes to diets whether we're talking about you know meat eating vegetarianism veganism and things like that it's pretty hard to lecture when you're you know we we live a certain way and we're looking after these animals but we feed them other animals and

Just that idea when you're out in a field in the middle of the city and your dog goes for a possum or even like leaps up for a bird, they're sort of showing you that there's so much, there is chaos in the world.

and that we can try to control that as much as we can. And if your dog kills something, let's say, and it feels like such a momentous thing that has happened, but is it only such because you're on here to see it or we're on here to see it? Is it only a terrible thing? And so I really, you know, because of that. And so I just, I want to,

to write a book that was true in that sense as well. And even showing, you know, not necessarily the nicest side of ourselves where

And I don't think it's a spoiler. It's right at the start of the book. But, you know, just Frosty when we got this dog was he just didn't know how to behave in a social setting when we walked him on the street and he was attacking us every time we walked him because he wanted to get to so many things and we were in the way. And so I had to have it out on him, have it out with him on the street. And, you know, and you'll get people just and that happens several times. And, you know, there can be so many things

judgments made about that sort of thing. But at the same time, I'm thinking, okay, you've got to be truthful about that. And again, sometimes that's when the visceral part of yourself comes out because you're connecting with these animals on their level and not being polite, just kind of being truthful above everything else. A testament to your ability on the page is that

that throughout this book, you can sense, let's say, heightened levels of anxiety that emerge around, let's say, taking a new dog out, having a new dog meet other dogs. Just potentially, with one of the last anecdotes you shared, bringing your young son home and not being quite sure whether or not the dogs are going to react the way that you expect.

But you also write in this book that much of your writing life has consisted of a primary emotion, which you call sort of abject fear and doubt in your abilities sometimes to continue with or maybe complete a story. And I wonder, you know, not to sort of maybe poke at old wounds or otherwise, but I'm just curious to know what your dogs taught you about fear and whether or not they were a useful vehicle for lessons that you might not have learned otherwise. Yeah.

Well, I think it's a really good way to talk about, it's a really good metaphor or analogy is I think talking about it just the other day to a friend where I just said, I kind of feel like I've spent my life trying to tame wild animals. And in this case,

the actual physical dogs, but also trying to make a book work is like trying to tame an animal. And I'm not saying, you know, I don't want to overdo that either, but I think it's this idea of you don't ever quite know what you're doing. You know, there's a time it's also like,

the analogy of whenever you see a house being built somewhere and especially if it's in a small town or something and people are very protective of the area and everyone's going, well, I don't know about this. Look at that, that looks terrible. It's because you're only halfway through it. And so I think there was always this idea with our dogs that, oh, we've just turned a corner. We've just turned a corner. The light is just up ahead. And then that is exactly when something would happen. And I think...

The idea of... I think it's just that... I guess that idea of this too shall pass. And with these animals, it was not necessarily... I guess there was a fear of what could always happen because they essentially were wild animals being domesticated. And I think...

It's no secret to some people that it took me 13 years to write a book after my most successful book. And I think

Whether that was preordained or whatever, I knew that was always going to be my hardest book. But I guess it's that idea of, I remember walking my two dogs in the dark of really early morning and that's when all the problem dog owners are out there. And in a way, it's a little bit like being a writer because a lot of your work gets done in the dark and you're always looking around for the light switch where you go, oh, that's it now. That's the way to go. And, uh,

And you're alone a lot of the time too. And so I think there's something solitary about being out there in the world with your dog or dogs in my case, and anything can happen at any point. And I guess...

it can be a terrible thing but it can also be a beautiful thing and in the case of writing a book it's you're just waiting for that time where you've got an ending in mind if you've plotted all of these moments and then doing the work and showing up to do the work is it's like learning a new language and i think it's that idea and i think i say

in the book that one of the best things that ever happens to you in your life, whether it's being a dog owner or not, but for me, one of the most satisfying things is when you've got this dog and you've got a particular whistle and they understand that. And when that whistle comes, no matter where they are, they start looking around for you and then they just come

bolting towards you. And of course there's nothing worse than when they look in that direction and go, well, you know, I'm not coming.

I'm just going to do what I want here. And that feels like an ultimate betrayal. But I think that's constantly what I'm looking for when I'm writing for a book. I'm waiting to understand the language of that book, which isn't English. It is what the book feels like and kind of what, you know, like you're going there. And even now I'm sort of rubbing, you know, or even feeling it something.

It's understanding something so that you know it so well that you could roll out of bed in the morning and land there in that world. And in a way, trying to understand these animals has felt kind of similar. And, you know, and then you lose them. And, you know, people say to me, have said to me, oh, is it really, was that really hard to write, you know, about your dogs dying or anything?

or anything, or all of those sorts of questions. And I just say, no, to me, there was even comedy in those tragedies. And there was something glorious about those moments as well because I got to live really intensely. And I think ultimately that's where I'm coming to is there's something intense about writing a book and there's something intense about being in the natural world with these animals that we can control but don't.

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So I wanted to take, I wondered if we could shift just a little bit into a little conversation perhaps about craft and the kind of the world of writing for you.

the reason that i think this is is in some ways quite um i guess important or certainly something that emerges in parallel with this story is you discuss you know the challenges of writing book of clay or bridge of clay um over a number of years but you also have in one of our first scenes with reuben or certainly one of the first few scenes with reuben

a shared sort of wake up routine, right? You were the first one up in the morning and Ruben was there sort of to meet you. And I wonder as a writer, you know, how do you schedule your day and did the routines with the dogs, did that become something that patterned the way that you got into your writing flow or your approach to writing or how was it that it gave shape to your day otherwise?

Yeah, I think one of the big things when people ask me about writing and how to do it and all of those things,

those sorts of questions is one of the big things is understanding when you're actually at your best. And for me, I've always been an early riser and I'm the youngest of four kids. And so we, I just remember always being the first one up in our house and getting up and just for whatever reason, this is just the most random kind of

detail but I just remember getting up in our old wooden tv and turning on the scooby-doo was on at like 5 30 in the morning and you know yeah solid solid start to the day and uh and then my dad would be up getting ready to go to work and so I understand that I work best in the morning generally and so and that was kind of how like Ruben wasn't really I didn't even

it wasn't my idea to get a dog. And I was kind of against it in the sense of we had two cats, we had a daughter and she was a tough hombre, you know, at three years old. And, you know, we just moved house. I was trying to write this book. And then next thing, just because I'm up first, I was like, well, I might as well take the dog out. And because I still don't, whilst I'm an early riser, I don't get up and just start writing straight away. It takes me at least an hour to start believing.

but I can actually do it. And so I would take, so what I love is that this dog would just be, I'd wake up and his head was there and it would just wake up to this dog's head in the morning. And that same friend I was talking about who had just lost his dog recently and said he wanted to write about him. And he said, yeah, it's because

Apparently they can, I don't know whether this is true or not, but they actually hear your breathing change kind of in advance to you actually waking up. And so he knows already and he'd be standing there. And I still remember those whispers in the dark of just, hey, Ruth, and then just getting up and taking him out. To which I say to people all the time, it's like they're the best personal trainers in the world.

and uh you know i remember having covid yeah and instead of i was still taking the dog out for a war because it just has to be done and there are here he needs to go and it's raining and so you go out and and so i guess again that idea of doing work that

you necessarily don't want to do sometimes is such a big part of writing as well and and so in my ideal world I would love to write from seven in the morning till midday

every day uh it depends sometimes i go down to the south coast of sydney and then it's sort of dog walk surf check and uh and then cut and then come back and start riding and i just what i all i really want to do at all times is just try to like writing's complicated enough

to not always try to simplify it. And so I generally just write chapter headings as my map, so to speak, over and over again, right even towards the end of a book. And just to sort of always feel like I'm there inside it and have it close to me.

and part of it is knowing that I'm going to get up and do those things. And so my day isn't complete. I can't really start work without taking the dog out first and then, you know, then there are these kids and school and all of that. But just getting to it as much as I can every day. And I'm also, lastly,

the kind of writer who I'm either writing or I'm not writing. So, and to qualify what I'm talking about there is if I'm writing, I'm writing a lot and I'm writing generally quite quickly. And so I'll do that for weeks or months on end. And then other times I'm doing the other stuff. I sort of coordinate all off. But a big part is writing.

that first early morning wake up and dog walk. My writing life isn't complete without that. So I wonder here, especially because this is your first nonfiction book, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the process of writing this versus some of your other stories in the past. And this is, in fact, and surely is a story too.

But as a writer of fiction, you're usually responsible for imagining other lives. And I wonder for you if the act of recording or documenting lives that people your own in some ways, or that certainly fill your own house, if that was different, if you felt it was different.

Or whether it was maybe better or worse isn't really the way in which you would sort of calibrate your evaluation of it. But I'm just curious to know if it had a different feel or flow than your other works and your approach, perhaps. Yeah, I always wanted... I wanted to be a writer from about... Well, from when I was 16 years old. And it was when I was reading novels and...

I finally understood what was so attractive about it to me and to me it was like this magic act of

I forget magicians and do all of the amazing things that they do. To me, this idea that somebody was just making this stuff up and I was believing it while I was in it. And I thought, that's what I want to do with my life. You know, to me, this was, was at the great year, black and white, also black words on a white page and I'm seeing it all in color and I feel like I'm there. And that's what I absolutely love about books, but you can,

Also, you can have that in fiction, but also in nonfiction as well. In a way, it's the same magical act, minus the idea of making it up, I suppose. But in this case, you're still making it up to be real on the page and to still be believable because someone still has to make that transformation from not knowing something to knowing it and then believing it.

And you could easily say, okay, this was more a case of what to leave out, but that's kind of a lazy answer as well, where you're just saying, oh, there was so much that happened. But that's the same when you're making it up as well. It's just as big a sacrifice what you leave out of a novel as, in this case, a nonfiction book.

But I still approached it in a really similar way to how I write a novel. I was really inspired by John Irving's

memoir, The Imaginary Girlfriend, which I really recommend because I feel like it's a great way into his novels. And he even says in it, I write huge novels, but this memoir is really slim. It's like 120 pages and about him being a wrestler and a wrestling coach. And I'd wanted to write a book like that maybe decades

20 years ago. It's kind of how I started writing with the book thief to tell you the truth. It was going to be a really slim book and then I was like, oh, that's not quite it. But you keep all of these things in the back pocket of your mind somewhere and you think maybe I can use it one day and do something else. And so my idea in this case was to try to be really disciplined. I really like a safe structure that I think you can be really creative within that. And that's why most of my books

sort of like the second half of my career, most of my books have a pretty mathematical structure. Like the book thief is, you know, there are,

there are 10 parts with eight parts in each of those 10 parts with four chapters in a prologue and four in an epilogue. So it's all really that. And just staying inside that really helps. And Bridge of Clay has its own structure like that too. And this book was just, okay, I want to keep it really slim. And so it was four parts with five chapters in each part. And just sticking within that always helps me just sort of go, no, no, don't step outside there.

you've got to try to make this work somehow. And yeah, and there are little ways to do that. But in the sense of,

it being about my family and about writing in general and yeah, and the joys and challenges of that and about these animals that were such a family to me as well. It was a real joy and it reminded me of being that 16 year old trying to write my first novel and discovering something new. And so I wasn't as fearful

to my desk every day. And so it was a real release in that way. And so it felt not necessarily like a side project, but just like a different version of me as a writer. And it got me to spend time writing

with these animals that I loved and with people I love too who are still with me but I got to see I got to be with my daughter who's 18 now and I went to go to university and and just be with her as a three-year-old again be with her as an eight-year-old again and see her react to things and my son as well and and I think so much of our lives is spent

in memories like that. And so I just, I love going to those moments where I'm seeing it all and feeling like I'm there all over again, because it's sort of like that's the life within our life. And getting to spend that time with them was, yeah, that was a real pleasure.

So it's always fascinating to me because I wonder whether or not what you find on the page sometimes is intentionally there or maybe it's unintentionally revealed. But a particular resonance sort of emerges in your story between how you describe the experience of writing stories or writing books and actually your process for selecting your wild dogs. You tell us you sort of know within the first paragraph or two whether a story will work.

And let's call it that same intuitive certainty seemed evident when you were selecting kind of your next perhaps crazy idea around what dog you were going to invite into your home. There was a sense in which you just sort of knew and were sure of upon first glance. And I wonder if there is a connection or revealed truth there in some sense. Absolutely. Because I think there's a point where I talk about that first dog, Ruben, where

I was resistant to him and then I went, "This dog's actually perfect for us." In the same way that I'm looking for a word in a sentence that is kind of just left or right of what it should be and kind of willing to be criticized by whoever, a reader, a critic,

or doesn't matter who the person is. I say, yeah, that's not quite, that's kind of wrong. I remember my dad once reading, I got him to check the German language that I used in the book and he was doing such a good job that he thought he might start correcting the English as well. And there was a moment where I talked about

this character, the mayor's wife, being punched drunk at her table and he said, "That's totally incorrect. Should be punched drunk."

And I said, yeah, but it's just left to what you thought it was going to be. And I'm willing to risk you thinking that I'm just wrong. And to me, that's the beauty of it. Like my favorite line, and I don't know how many times I've said this at a library or a book event or something. I said, my favorite line from any novel is from Michael Chabon's, I never know if I'm

saying his last name correctly. But in the amazing adventures of Cavalier and Clay, he describes a big ocean liner coming into New York Harbor. And he says, "The Rotterdam came into New York Harbor like a mountain wearing a dinner jacket."

And to me, it's so perfectly offbeat that you see it and you see the buttons of a dinner jacket as the little windows on that boat. And so I just like that idea of just trying to find something that's purely you. And I remember, you know, the best advice my parents ever gave me

was I remember losing a race as a kid doing athletics, being really young and thinking that I'd won and I got put in sixth spot and crying to my dad. And he said, well, I think you might've won as well, but here's the thing. You didn't win by enough. You have to win by so much that they can't take it off you. And now that's how I feel about writing, but not in a sense of winning anything. I think that's just a futile thing

attempt at, it's just an act of futility. And so, but I want to write so much like myself that only I could have written

that particular book or whatever I'm working on. And those little quirks or those ideas of language and a love of language. And what I want to, what the point about that Michael Chabon image about, you know, the mountain wearing a dinner jacket is to me, that's a guy who's climbed the mountain and done all this hard work during his day. And the promise of that mountain is the promise of a sandpit.

or a sandbox where you get to just play. And that's someone who's just playing with the woes and going, "Oh, that's it." But you don't know unless you're willing to take the risk and willing to go there. And our selection process for our dogs is kind of similar in that

We're not looking necessarily for something safe. And I'm not saying that makes us courageous in any way. I mean, we'd be much smarter getting a purebred dog or something more manageable. But when people have said, I didn't quite understand why you take on these animals. And we say, well, someone has to.

And it's not only that, but we're kind of drawn to the underdog image or the not quite accepted image. And that kind of fits into a particular context.

niche or nook in our family that works for us because we know that's where our better story is and not that we would ever articulate that the way I just did now it just feels right and and that's part of why we do it and in so many ways you know I can joke about it now and say God all all the money and time and energy we spent on those dogs it's only kind of fitting that

I'm kind of getting something out of it now and there's a book written about it. And it was a book that was just an absolute joy to write. But I think I got to, I often say that Frosty, our new dog, was such a pleasure to have, even though it was really hard to begin with, because he really keeps our other two dogs near us.

And first it's just in comparison. We're going, oh, Archie never would have done that. Or, oh, he's actually friendlier than Reuben and Archer together. But now it's just, yeah, it's a sense of spirit that, you know, my dog...

is lying down next to me here. And when I came back tonight to do this interview, 'cause I was out earlier and he was kind of waiting there for me. And so it just brings back those memories and kind of that spirit. And I think we all wanna live lives that have those kinds of memories. And for me,

It's kind of a privilege and a pleasure to miss those dogs as well. And I'm driving down a particular street sometimes and I think of one of them in particular and I go, oh, it's really sad to think of that, that I don't have him anymore. But I kind of like that sadness. I kind of like that I have that in my life. It's a good thing and it makes me grateful for having had some of the tumultuous times as well.

In a sense too, at least in your example of returning home tonight, a reminder that we're never really alone, perhaps. There's always somebody out there looking and waiting for you, hopefully. I wonder too, as we... And like I said, I could talk to you for hours about any number of things, but recognizing that I don't have that luxury today, and it's obviously also very late where you are. I wondered as we draw to a close,

I wanted to take us onto the topic of the book thief, which for many might be the way in which they come to know you. It's been 20 years as of this year since it was published, and certainly much has changed both in the world of publishing and obviously in your life, children grown to adulthood in that same period. And in your acknowledgements of this book, you thank those readers out there who still carry the flag.

And I just wonder as a writer and as a reader and as a parent and a dog owner, if you could just share how you think of the power of stories today, how important they still are or the ways in which they matter. Because I think, you know, perhaps more than ever before, we might be looking for

those things that take us from our everyday and remind us of something different? Absolutely. I mean, I could start with the darkness first, which is when you go to your local railway station or something and you just see everybody tapping on their phones and you go, God, how did we become this pathetic group?

And then every now and again you see someone reading and I'm not saying people aren't reading on their phones and so on as well, but I'm just so constantly reminded as well that really what we're made of

They're all the physical elements of us, but what we're really made of in my mind is we're just made of stories. And our stories is what make us who we are and how we understand the world and people around us. And when I talk about or sort of acknowledge people who are still engaging with books and carrying the flag, as you say, it always still staggers me

in so many ways that when I first came into writing and publishing, my first book came out in 1999. And it was kind of felt, feels like now that was coming to the end of a golden age of books that have lasted centuries.

but centuries and the world in the last 20 years since then has changed so much that we could despair. But people have been talking about the death of books forever and something new comes in, oh that's the end of books. But books have always survived and I think what a lot of writers are afraid of is maybe their own relevance as writers fading and I think

having this conversation with you and often thinking about this book as well. And I mean, I'm just grateful that I still get to do it. I'm still grateful that people come up to me talking about, and I don't care if it's my book, but you know, they talk about the last book they loved and I see them light up when they talk about that. And talking to you today, I feel myself light up when I'm telling stories. And, and so, yeah,

That's, I think, the greatest part of my life. And I owe my whole life to books, really. And that I get to tell stories and then hear other people's stories. And, you know, you realise you're halfway through your life, as I am now, hopefully.

- Yeah, at 49 or seven squared as I like to call it. And hopefully there are plenty of great stories ahead as well, but I'm really grateful for the ones that I've got to carry and that I had, you know, I'm the spoiled fourth child of my family and the youngest in that I got to spend time with my parents at a really meaningful age. You know, whereas my siblings got their attention probably earlier in their lives and it was their stories

that taught me how to write. And I think that's the biggest gift that they gave me. So the magic of artistic creation is that having never been real, fictional characters live on forever in books and in the minds of readers.

and they're made eternal through the care and craft of an author. But with Three Wild Dogs, you're able, as record and tribute, to immortalize for us and for the many who knew and loved them, the four-legged protagonists in your perhaps most personal of stories. So I just wanted to thank you, Marcus, for sharing them with us.

and for sharing your time with Intelligence Squared today. Three Wild Dogs and all of Marcus's previous books are available online and at a bookstore near you and to all our listeners out there. Until next time. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Leila Ismail.