JD: No one! I realize this sounds nuts, but I really, honestly didn’t think about who might read the book while I was writing it. I hoped it would be published someday and some people might read it and like it, but I didn’t let my mind wander too far down that path or linger there for long.

I have a tremendously well-developed capacity for denial, which I think you sort of have to have to some degree if you’re going to write a novel. If you dwell too long on thinking about how many pages you have yet to write, or what’s going to happen when you try to publish it, or what the Amazon reviewers will say, you will lose your mind. I was really only trying to write a book that I’d want to read enough to be able to keep writing it. I’m very lucky that reviews seemed to find it reasonably intelligent, because it’s mostly just the musings of a 25-year-old recently out of a philosophy degree.

RY: Aleksandr is largely based on Garry Kasparov, whom you mentioned (the Russian chess genius who played that IBM computer back in the 90s). Do you know if Garry has read the book? Have you been in contact with him? How do you feel when you imagine him reading your novel?

JD: This is a terrifying idea. I doubt he’s read it. I take solace in the thought that he’s probably too busy with other things at the moment to stay on top of little-known American contemporary literary fiction—but if he did, I hope he might be vaguely bemused by it. I don’t think he’d find too much of it familiar. Although he was the inspiration for the idea of a chess-champion-turned-dissident-character, the book only lifts a handful of episodes from his life.