Mark Haskell Smith is the author of the novels Moist and Delicious.

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Mark Haskell Smith: Your first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, was set in eighteenth-century England. Why did you choose to move to seventeenth-century Amsterdam for The Coffee Trader?

David Liss: I wrote Conspiracy while I was in graduate school, studying eighteenth-century British literature and culture, and that’s when I first began to grow interested in the Dutch golden age. The Britons of the eighteenth century always looked to the seventeenth-century Dutch as their financial, political, economic, and religious forebears, and that always fascinated me. Plus, like everyone else, I love the paintings. I always thought that if I ever had free time, I would learn more about the period. But when you’re in grad school, you hardly have time to shower, let alone delve into cultures that don’t feed your dissertation. But when I had to come up with a subject for a second novel, I figured that I finally had the excuse to dig in.

MHS: And why coffee?

DL: I’m now working on a fourth book, and with the exception of the first one, none of them have gone in the direction I originally thought. I started this project by thinking I would write about messianic fervor in the Jewish community in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, and I did a lot of reading about Sabbatai Sevi, the false messiah. Interesting stuff, but I never really saw the story I wanted to tell. So I just began reading around as much as I could. I read books about the Dutch, about the period in general, histories of commerce and so forth. But when I was making my way through Fernand Braudel’s shockingly entertaining three-volume history of capitalism, I came across a single reference to the origin of monopolies in the seventeenth century, and I thought, There’s my story! I knew at once I wanted to write about a ruined man trying to restore his wealth, so I figured it would make more sense if he was trying to corner a commodity that was just emerging rather than one that was already firmly established. I dug around, and I discovered that both coffee and chocolate were just coming into European consciousness in the mid-seventeenth century.

MHS: And you started by writing about chocolate?

DL: Chocolate was out first, and so there were more primary documents to look at. So, in a way, I was seduced by the material. People who wrote about chocolate in the seventeenth century were so excited about its marvelous qualities—all the diseases it could cure, how it improved your emotional life, you name it—that it was hard not to share their excitement. But after I’d finished a pretty solid draft, I realized that I was trying to write something that was edgy and nervous and anxious and about business. The book had really been about coffee all along.

MHS: Was it easy to switch over?

DL: Very. Besides, I like coffee probably more than I like chocolate. It was a great excuse to read about coffee and try all kinds of new coffees.

MHS: Why are you so interested in financial history?

DL: I’m actually not, at least not in an aggressive way. When I was in graduate school, I was researching issues of self-perception and debt in eighteenth-century British lit, and I think that interest stemmed from my own terrible credit card debt. And when I started to write fiction, I was more interested in deceptive behavior than anything else. Money is a great motivator for people to behave badly. I enjoyed writing about the stock market in my first book and the early commodities exchanges in The Coffee Trader, but I don’t know that I’ll write another book specifically about business. I might, but I’m not particularly driven to do so.

MHS: Will you continue to write books about people behaving badly?

DL: I don’t know if I could write any other kind. I love to read suspenseful novels, and I especially like novels in which the suspense is small and personal rather than big and global. I wanted to make The Coffee Trader about the kinds of crises that lots of people experience in their lives. I find stories about plots to kidnap the president or hijack the space station less interesting than a well-rendered sequence about, say, some kid who has stolen twenty bucks from his hard-drinking uncle, and now he’s going to be in trouble. If we can identify with his fear and with him, that can be incredibly compelling.

MHS: Will you continue writing about Jewish history?

DL: I’m not sure I plan to continue writing only historical novels. The novel I’m working on now is not historical. At the same time this interview comes out my publisher will be releasing A Spectacle of Corruption, which is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Paper. Readers have been asking me to continue to write stories about Benjamin Weaver, the protagonist of these books, and he is a fun character to write about, so as long as there is interest, I’ll probably return, at least occasionally, to this milieu. But as for my other projects, I don’t want to be limited to anything.

MHS: How come all the Jewish characters in The Coffee Trader are basically wicked? I know that you are Jewish, so is this some sort of self loathing at work?

DL: I’m really interested in Jewish identities at various points in history, but I’m also interested in, as I mentioned, people who do bad things. As a result, when I write about Jewish characters, they tend to be, like all my characters, morally complex. Most of us are perfectly capable of doing rotten things and then justifying them to ourselves, and I prefer to write about realistic people rather than have Dickensian characters: heroes who are flawlessly good and villains who are unspeakably bad. I think there can be a certain readerly satisfaction in dealing with absolutely good or bad characters, but that’s just not the route I want to go. So, the bottom line is that these people aren’t flawed because they are Jewish, they’re just people who are Jewish, and because they are people, they are flawed.

MHS: Yes, they’re flawed, but isn’t the book ultimately about redemption?

DL: Sure. Miguel wants to prove himself to be a good man, a good Jew, a good merchant—he wants to erase all the mistakes of his past and start over. But he sometimes loses sight of the process and focuses too much on the goal. I think that’s why most people make bad choices. It’s like in politics; many people run for office because they have political or ideological goals they want to advance, but after a while it becomes about getting re-elected instead of advancing a cause.

MHS: Is it true that you are actually the same person as the wrestler, Goldberg?

DL: No, I’m glad to have an opportunity to put an end to that rumor. Goldberg is not the wrestling alter-ego that I’ve assumed.

MHS: What was the hardest part about writing The Coffee Trader?

DL: The problem of not knowing Dutch. There were lots of documents I would encounter that I could not read, and I had to find translations, have them translated, or—if it seemed like the right choice—do without. After working on eighteenth-century Britain, where there was so much material easily available, I found the Netherlands of the previous century very confining. People didn’t publish as much yet and they didn’t publish as much on trivial subjects. In the eighteenth century, you would find little pamphlets on how to make your bed or how to talk to your son about sex or all kinds of crazy stuff that helps to illuminate everyday life. The seventeenth century is a bit less chatty.

MHS: What kinds of books do you like to read?

DL: I’m largely omnivorous. I’ll read anything of almost any genre. Probably not romance, but you never know. Convince me, and I’ll read it. I’m lucky enough to travel around and meet lots of different writers, so I spend a pretty good amount of time reading books by people I’ve met and like. I’ll also read a great deal on whatever I’m researching at the moment.

MHS: What about the classics? Who are your favorites?

DL: I love the great eighteenth-century novelists, especially Fielding. Closer to our own time, though maybe not by much, I’ve become a big devotee of Anthony Trollope, master of the ambiguous character. It’s always nice to like an author with so many books. I also love books from the American naturalist movement. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie may be the single most influential book I’ve ever read. I think the way he creates tension and suspense is brilliant.

MHS: You’re often classified as a mystery writer. Do you see yourself that way?

DL: I understand that genre classification is useful to publishers and booksellers, and even to readers, but I don’t like thinking in those terms. On some levels, all good narratives are mysteries—Will he get the girl? Will she find the strength to endure the ordeal? Will they stop the bad guys?—and the reason for that is that readers like the feeling of wanting to discover some sort of hidden truth. I know I like that. I try to write books that allow my readers to feel that sense of discovery, regardless if they are trying to discover who killed someone or what a character’s hidden motivations might be. You could even write a compelling story around the mystery "What’s for dinner?" though I don’t know that I want to tackle that one just yet.

MHS: Where do you get your ideas?

DL: I hate that question.

MHS: Me too. I just wanted to see how you would deal with it.

DL: Where don’t I get my ideas? I get a new idea every day. Being alive, reading the paper, going to the supermarket. Everywhere there are two people having a conversation, there’s a novel waiting to be written. My problem, frankly, isn’t getting the idea, it’s figuring out how to turn an idea into a story. That’s the hard part, and there’s no easy solution. "Getting" implies that once you have the idea, you’re ready to roll. For me, figuring out how the idea plays out, who the characters are, what’s at risk for them, and all that stuff—that’s the back-breaking labor.