On his website, Tim Pears reveals that the novel is set in the Devon village where he grew up (Trusham on the edge of Dartmoor) He had written many 'appalling' poems in his twenties then adapted one into a story; this liberated him and he never wrote another poem; just stories which eventually became this, his first novel. He cites his other influences as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Marc Chagall’s paintings of the Russian Pale, Mikhail Sholokhov’s tales of Don Cossacks, and New Zealander Vincent Ward’s film "Vigil".