The Irish novelist (Havoc in its Third Year, The Catastrophist), winner of several literary prizes and scriptwriter (The Hamburg Cell, Love Lives), talks about his life, his books and his personal experiences with the IRA, as well as about his latest novel set in St Petersburg in 1914, Zugzwang, published in instalments in The Observer in print and online. The academic and poet Adriana Bebiano is Assistant Professor of English and Irish Literature at the University of Coimbra.