He might not be born and bread, but deWitt has lived out West him self so he isn't entirely removed from his subject; “I did live in California for years off and on,” he muses “but that wasn’t the motivation.” He goes on: “There wasn’t any one particular event that impelled me to write The Sisters Brothers, either; it was more a few things coming together, pointing me in the right direction.” So, what were those things? “For one, I wanted to try to tell a story-based book, rather than a voice-based book, like my first novel, Ablutions. Around this same time I was tinkering with a bit of dialogue between two grouchy men on horseback. Then I found a book at a yard sale nearby my house that was about the Gold Rush. Once I realised these two grouchy men should be brothers -- I’ve got an older and a younger brother -- then everything gelled, and I got to work.” Modest beginnings for a novel nominated for one of the most prestigious prizes in literature.

Eli Sisters, the novel's narrator, is a unique character – part philosopher, part melancholiac but, primarily, mercenary killer. And yet, he seems more human and more likeable than the great majority of modern fictional protagonists; was deWitt actively looking to cultivate Eli in to an antihero-sort, rather than just a coldblooded killer? “Definitely.” He answers...definitely, “And not just for the reader, but for me as well. I didn’t want to spend two years with a man I didn’t enjoy being around.”

Before he was a sophomore novelist, Patrick deWitt was a bartender, and his first novel Ablutions, is born out of that world and his experiences with other people in it. “I think it was helpful in that I came to understand people outside of my little realm of peers,” he explains. “You meet so many different types of folks behind a bar, and you have to learn how to speak with them. I remember when I first started working there I really had no idea what to say to businessman, for example. But by the time I left, six years later, it was second nature. And getting to know various sorts of people can only help your writing.” And, even though Charlie Sisters is himself no stranger to the sauce, and The Sisters Brothers does share a chromosome or two with his previous work, it's a far cry from that past: “I wanted a clean break. And the next book is about a corrupt investment advisor in Manhattan who expatriates to France to avoid imprisonment, so that will be another shift for me.”

With that third novel still in the works, though, the fact remains that deWitt is a relative junior in literary terms, having only written two novels; it must have come as some surprise, then, when The Sisters Brothers was shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize? “I had no clue if it would be panned or revered or what,” he offers modestly. “I was worried the literary crowd might shun it because it was a Western, and I was worried the Western fans wouldn’t like it because it’s a bit to the side of the norm. All I knew was that I felt I’d done my best, and so that bolstered me. Naturally I hoped it would do well, but I never expected it to do as well as it has.”

deWitt's own Wikipedia page has less than two hundred words, and the novels themselves don't seem to have warranted one at all – you have to wonder if the Canadian is trying to preserve some sense of mystique; “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” he answers, putting pay to that idea more or less immediately. “I do interviews all the time, and I’ll speak with anyone who wants to discuss the work. I tend to keep a distance from anything relating to me or my work online but that’s not stemming from a reclusive tendency, it’s just easier not knowing about any of that stuff.” He says that being a word-of-mouth success was never a priority; “The credibility issue isn’t on my mind, but knowing that the book’s going from hand to hand like that, either from booksellers to the public or from one friend to another, is pretty great.”

The winner of this year's Man Booker Prize will be decided tonight; regardless of the result, this novel and its author are well worth keeping an eye on.