Susanna Clarke Wrote a Hit Novel Set in a Magical Realm. Then She Disappeared. - The New York Times

Writing fiction often contains an element of self-hypnosis, of flying in the dark.

‘People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than anything else.’