“When you’re working in intelligence agencies, you have no idea whether all your colleagues are complete idiots or geniuses.” McEwan quotes John le Carré’s experience with collegial interaction between spies: “Because you never know what they’re doing, you never know if they’re just pretending to be more stupid than they are, or that they really are completely stupid.”

Ian McEwan (b. 1948) is an award winning English novelist and screenwriter. McEwan has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for the novel 'Amsterdam' in 1998. In 2001 he published 'Atonement', which apart from wining numerous awards, also was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Among his other books are 'Saturday' (2005), 'On Chesil Beach' (2007), 'Solar' (2010) and 'Sweet Tooth' (2012). He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011. Read more about him here: http://www.ianmcewan.com/

John le Carré (b. 1931 as David John Moore Cornwell) is one of the most acclaimed British authors of espionage novels, who during the 1950s and 1960s worked for the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. His novel ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (1936) became an international bestseller following which he left the services to become a full-time author. Read more about him here: http://www.johnlecarre.com/author

Ian McEwan was interviewed by Synne Rifbjerg at the Louisiana Literature festival at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in 2013.

Camera: Klaus Elmer & Mathias Nyholm
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015

Supported by Nordea-fonden