How British author, translator and publisher Harvey Thomlinson helped bring Asian literature to the world

Bookish boyhood: I was a studious kid. Like my five brothers and sisters, I learned piano from my mother, Carol, and played the violin. I wonder if my experimental approach to language was shaped by that early immersion in music, because music has syntax, too, of repetition and variation.

My father, Chris, is a German translator who also studied Russian, so I loved reading from a young age and would digest books whenever I could, even at the dinner table. Growing up, our shelves were full of Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and I loved to try to decode the Cyrillic script.

I eventually got into Oxford University, where I read history and economics. Seamus Heaney was poetry professor then and I remember joining a group that hung out with him in a back room at the Bullingdon pub. He was an overpowering presence, a very tall man. I was too in awe to say much.

Literary nomad: My shy and lovely Oxford history tutor, Cliff Davies, said every age offered a sanctuary for dreamers who prefer the contemplative life to hard work; in the Middle Ages you became a monk, and in our time an academic. After my first degree, I was supposedly doing a PhD but in reality I was firing off stories to journals while busking and drifting around North Africa, the United States and, later, China.

My thesis was about historical narratives, but eventually I realised I would be better able to explore this theme through writing fiction. During this time, I read a lot of philosophy; I was interested in Derrida, Lacan and Heidegger, and I had a treasured collection of books, which were all lost after I put them in storage in New York and failed to reclaim them. The Buddhists are right that it’s best not to become too attached to stuff.