How British novelist Will Dean’s off-grid life in a Swedish forest inspires his Nordic noir thrillers
‘I thought I would have so much time to read and write, but actually I spend a lot of time chopping wood, clearing ditches and repairing my road’, he says
Comfort in books I was born in the East Midlands, in Britain, in 1979. My father was an insurance salesman and we moved about nine times when I was a child, from village to village. I have a younger sister. We didn’t have next door neighbours that I knew, so I was a bit of a loner, socially awkward, and I found comfort in books.
When I was four or five, I obsessively reread Roald Dahl books. I was constantly writing stories and reading. I didn’t come from a bookish family – there were no books in the house – so they thought I was quite strange. I’d ask my mum to take me to the library, which was just a lorry that went from village to village.
No one in my family had been to school past the age of 16, so they thought it was strange that I wanted to continue my studies and leave the village, but I was determined to get to London. My family were of the idea that I could go to London, but I should do something practical. Law seemed like a good choice to placate them, so I went to the London School of Economics to study that.
Wig and pen I met my (Swedish) wife, Emilia, in my first month at university. I was 18. We studied together and then lived in London together; she’s a lawyer. I had a few years doing strange jobs – I worked on a building site, in restaurants and bars, I sold discount hair coupons for two years. I was terrified of living a corporate life.
I read two books a week, mainly fiction. I like unnerving, unsettling fiction, a lot of thrillers and crime, but also speculative and historical fiction. Then I realised it was too hard a life, I couldn’t pay the bills. I was persuaded to work in the City, in finance, designing and building bond trading infrastructure, and did that for 10 years.
