Hotel Atonaal

"This is a rather important, heartfelt book. Hotel Atonaal is about the 1950s writers’ movement. I read it just before my tour of duty in Bosnia and took it with me so that I could reread it. The people he portrayed were Dutch poets living in Paris. They were very poor but they all decided to write full-time and these were all angry young men, not writing poetry like their predecessors did, not the sublime poetry that was customary. This was more free verse and that inspired me and gave me the last push I needed to see that writing and not the army was my natural environment. It’s a big step. They were conscripted so there was more chance that there was a poet among them. I was a career soldier, a regular army officer. It’s a bit strange, I can tell you. My family was in the resistance in the Second World War and, although I was born in 1962, I wanted to be a hero for my family."