Peter Stamm, Swiss writer

I asked a man last night, a nuclear engineer, if he believed in nuclear power and he said, "yes, but humans can't be in charge of it."

I told him how strange it had been once to be in the French village of Cliosclaut in the Rhone Valley and to see the top of tower of the nuclear power plant down-river from my bedroom window.

Part of the problem if there is a problem is that we're always getting ahead of ourselves, and getting ahead of ourselves has become a habit that's become a problem.

If I were to be born again I'd be born again in Switzerland, a country which voted in March by a two-thirds majority to ban bonuses and golden parachutes for corporate executives and legally compel companies to consult shareholders on executive pay.

The Swiss have the oldest operating nuclear power reactor in the world, Beznau, and were drawing up plans for nuclear power to supply at least 40% of the country's electricity needs as early as 1946. They currently have 5 nuclear power plants in operation.

In 2011 the Swiss government decided to phase out nucelar power by 2034.

Sometimes when I'm writing I like the energy of what I'm writing so much that I just let it go where it wants to go even though there's a good possibility it's not going anywhere other than where the energy is taking it. Sometimes the writing is good, having gone exactly where it needed to go, but more often it's not as good as it might have been had I stopped and taken charge of it, and I have to start again from the beginning.

Peter Stamm is a Swiss writer whose novels are admirable from beginning to end. There's thought in his work and real feeling too.