‘I‘ve never been particularly interested in reading fiction based on the lives and activities of real people, and I definitely never intended to write a novel about real people… But eventually I ended up writing a novel based on the real-life 18-year relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren [pictured]…’

Douglas Cowie’s guest post for the Foyles blog: ‘The Corners of Attachment – Imagining the spaces between the facts’.