They say you should write about what you know. I've never been a translator, so I decided to write a book about a translator. Which became The Mule.

Which is not true at all. I decided to write a book written in translatorese, the odd dialect of written English in which British and American slang from different decades clash together like verbal armies in the night. Where men can be "blokes" one minute and walking down the "sidewalk" the next.

And after I had started writing like that, I had to find a reason for writing like that. Who would write like a translation?  The answer is obvious; a translator.