Joakim Zander

Your background spans Sweden, the Middle East and the US. How did those experiences shape the way you write?

I grew up mainly on the east coast of Sweden, not far from the islands where the ending of The Swimmer takes place, but since my father worked for the United Nations I spent some time in the Middle East as a teenager. Later I was an exchange student outside Washington D.C., and after high school I studied law in Uppsala and Maastricht before working for about ten years in Brussels for the EU. All of those experiences found their way into the book in one way or another. Writing has always been part of my life though. Ever since I read Enid Blyton and the Biggles books as a child, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I never really thought of it as a career, so those early attempts stayed in notebooks and on hard drives until I finally had the idea for this novel.

“All of those experiences found their way into the book.”

You were working in a demanding legal career while writing. How did you actually make it happen?

I wrote mainly at night when my family had gone to sleep. I didn’t know if it would amount to anything, and I didn’t want it to interfere with work or family life, but I had reached a point where I felt I needed to give writing a serious attempt. I read Stephen King’s On Writing, where he recommends setting a daily word count and sticking to it no matter what, so I decided on 1000 words five days a week. Without that discipline I would never have got beyond the first few chapters. Once I got going, I wrote whenever I could — lunch breaks, airports, waiting for meetings — any spare half hour. It became quite intense, almost like an addiction, but it was the only way to do it at the time.

What matters more when writing — inspiration or discipline?

Discipline, without question. Inspiration is a fickle friend, hard work is not.

“Without that discipline I would never have got beyond the first few chapters.”

Your characters feel grounded in reality. Do they come from people you’ve known?

Most of the characters probably have elements of me in them, but I’ve definitely drawn from people I’ve met through work and studies. The lobbyist George Lööw, for example, is a composite of many lobbyists and lawyers I encountered in Brussels. I tend to make mental notes about how people behave, how they speak, what they wear, even what they drink. I think most writers do that, consciously or not.

Was the idea of the swimmer symbolic from the start?

Not really. I’m not much of a swimmer myself, but it suited the character — the repetitiveness of it, the submersion, the sense of hiding. It allows him to retreat from the choices he has made and perhaps regrets.

“Most of the characters probably have elements of me in them.”

Which books have stayed with you over time?

That’s a very hard question because I’ve always read a lot, but I remember reading John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as a teenager and being struck by how it combined style and language with such a compelling story. I still return to J.D. Salinger and the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, and more recently I’ve been very impressed by the honesty and humanity in Gary Shteyngart’s writing.

“Inspiration is a fickle friend, hard work is not.”

You’ve spoken about stepping away from law to focus on writing. What does that shift feel like?

It’s going to be an interesting year. I’m taking leave from my job to pursue writing full time, and we’re moving from Helsinki to southern Sweden for my wife’s new job. With the book being published in multiple countries, there will be a lot happening, but the main focus will be on writing the next novel.

Joakim Zander is a Swedish novelist and former EU lawyer, best known for The Swimmer and subsequent international thrillers.

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Interview by Carl Marsh