Interview: Author David Peace is riding high, so why does he plan to stop soon?

DAVID PEACE KNOWS THAT HE shouldn't be telling me what he is telling me. He shouldn't be telling me it because it's nothing to do with what we're supposed to be talking about, which is his new novel. And it isn't as though there isn't anything interesting enough to say about that, because there's almost too much.

Let's get something out of the way first. The hype. His publishers are saying 2009 is "the year of Peace", what with Channel 4 showing Red Riding, then The Damned United, his novel set inside the mad, messianic, football-focused mind of Brian Clough, first at a multiplex near you and next month out as a DVD. All that before you even start talking about the new novel, Occupied City, set half a world and half a century away, the one I should be talking to him about and the one he'll be talking about himself at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Of all the writers of literary fiction I have ever interviewed – at this stage, about a hundred – only a handful have ever been in the position Peace is now, their work both critically acclaimed and showing up on the nation's big and small screens. But not one of them has ever told me what David Peace just has.

It's this. That when he's finished the novel he's working on now, he'll write two more. And that will be it. Finis. The end. He won't publish any more fiction after that.

It won't be anything to do with his health. It won't be anything to do with creativity slowly freezing up inside the Peace brain. It won't be anything to do with money. It won't be anything to do with spending more time with his family. Lord knows, it's not a publicity gimmick. Every single reason you can think of is irrelevant.

He just won't do it.