Free From Harm is currently running an interview with UK author Joseph D’Lacey.

UK Author Joseph D’Lacey has taken the literary world by storm with his recent novel, Meat: You Are What You Eat. The transformative power of this book and the creative ways it has been marketed have together made it a phenomenon in Europe. And in 2011 it will be released in the US. Meat has been translated into German, French, Hungarian, Russian and Turkish and was optioned for film in ’08. Meat also secured him the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009. After numerous press appearances and 30,000 books sold, D’Lacey shares with us the fascinating background story and ideas that led to the writing of this profound work of fiction.

In response to a question about what he hoped readers would take away from the book, D’Lacey says, “That’s a toughie.

“It’s important to be clear that I didn’t set out to send a message to my fellow humans when I wrote the book. My first duty is to entertain. As a horror writer, that means the entertainment has to be terrifying – creepy at the very least. I wanted to write something so grim and disturbing that it would ‘stick’ with readers. In order to do that, I needed to know what I was talking about. In educating myself about meat, it became clear that the book would have a dimension beyond simple horror – it was going to provoke people.

“I know readers – die-hard horror fans – who have reached the last page of Meat and become vegan. Likewise, lapsed vegetarians have returned to their old ways. But, mostly, readers come away from the book having been on an uncomfortable journey; thrilled and disgusted in equal measure.

“If there is an idea in Meat, something worth bringing back to real life, it is this:

“The world is presented to us as being a certain way. Organisations want us to accept the histories, faiths, lifestyles and products they hold up as the ‘true’ or ‘desirable’. We must do only one thing in response – question everything.”

You can read the interview in its entirety here: Joseph D’Lacey

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