I am serious too, when I'm working. We don't dance at the end of conferences. I needed an escape. When I was younger I found it playing my accordion; now I write. I do see a link now in the desire to find a way through a problem. The difference is that the truth is rarely certain in history, but when you are inventing a detective story, you are the master - you know the truth. The most pleasant part, though, is playing with the words. Playing with the music of the words.

The plague theme emerges in your first novel to be translated into English, Have Mercy On Us All. Why?

I have spent three years sitting on a stool in the grey, dusty attics of the Pasteur Institute, reading all those mediaeval and modern texts - by "modern" I mean from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It is terrible and beautiful to witness the struggle for life, the despair that the observers describe. Plague is a heavy subject, because it still exists, killing people every year. So I took notes for a novel as I was going along. I wrote Have Mercy On Us All to share the burden with my readers.

interview with Fred Vargas
Laura Spinney
New Scientist
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review at Barista
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La verité sur Cesare Battisti