‘Institute’ is a novel that has a long history. I wrote it for the first time 12 years ago, then there was a second edition in which I significantly revised it. When the pandemic started, of course I had this idea that now everyone would be a bit like the characters in ‘The Institute’. In addition, there was a conspiracy narrative quite quickly – plandemics and so on. That made it all the more associated with ‘The Institute’, with the trapped heroes and ‘Them’ being the perpetrators of their confinement.

It was a party flat. People from all over the city used to flock there for bifors and afterys because it was located in a good location and you could meet a lot of cool people there. One time I thought – what would happen if someone locked us in from the outside, if we couldn’t leave? I quickly realised that nothing would happen because, after all, the Institute is on the ground floor. But what if it was on the fourth floor of the building? Or if someone had closed the grille separating the corridor from the stairs? That, in a nutshell, is how I came up with ‘Institute’.