Steven Hall: Ink test

There are now 23 foreign publishers for Steven Hall's thrilling debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts (Canongate, March)‚a sustained burst of publishing enthusiasm that has left the Hull-based writer, as he puts it, "fire-fighting my own excitement".

The title of the novel is a play on the Rorschach test, the famous "ink-blot" psychological test in which subjects are analysed via their interpretation of abstract designs. And that is precisely how the author wants his novel to be read, he says.

"I love the idea that the book is essentially just black ink on white, just like the ink-blot test, and that everything you see is pretty much what you project onto it. I like the idea of that being one of the central themes of the book-that half of what you see is coming from you. I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to pull it off, but I think it worked."

The Raw Shark Texts opens with Eric Sanderson breaking into consciousness, with no memory of his past. Posted nearby are instructions on how to contact a psychiatrist, Dr Randle, but she brings little insight to his terrifying situation. Instead, she warns him to beware of letters that will threaten his psychological stability‚letters that, when he opens them, turn out to be from "the first Eric Sanderson", warning him of danger and offering bizarre rituals of self-protection.

Soon the danger makes itself evident: it is nothing less than a conceptual predator, a psychic shark, that preys on thought processes and consumes identity, and which Hall succeeds in investing with an edge of real horror. Meanwhile, shards of discovered text are telling Eric about episodes from his mysterious past: including an intense love affair with Clio, a woman now dead‚or is she?

"I had two starting points," says Hall. "One was that I was interested in writing about love and loss. If you're really close to someone else, how much of you would you lose if that person went?

"And the other thing I was thinking about was all the water references you have when you talk about language and ideas and thought: stream of consciousness, flow of conversation, depths of the unconscious and stuff. I was imagining, if these really were streams and flows, what kind of animal would live there? So that's where the shark evolved from."

Hall studied fine art at Sheffield University, and, he says, "a lot of art is about those kinds of thought games and puzzles". Clever shark word-pictures decorate the text.

"Somebody called the novel a masterclass in manic depression, and you can read the whole of the book as a kind of emotional breakdown," Hall says. "But when people say to me: 'How would you describe this book?', I say: 'I don't really want to, because people come up with such wonderful, rich readings.' There are things in there that nudge you in one direction, and back in another, and it's really up to you to just trust your instincts."