[In the following interview, Cooper discusses the themes and characters from Amnesia, his literary influences, and his views on Canadian literature.]

[Chapman]: What was the inspiration for Amnesia?

[Cooper]: The inspiration was multiple. It's almost impossible to trace any large work back to a single inspiration, but I suppose I could trace it back to a single image: a boy trying to bring a kitten back to life by wrapping a wire around it's neck then trailing the wire up the television aerial, in homage to Doctor Frankenstein. I'm not sure if that was the very first image, but it was an extremely early one that gave rise to the entire project.

In the novel the animal is a puppy. Why did you change it from a cat to a dog?

I'm not precisely sure. It had something to with the dialogue between the feline and the canine...