If he's written it, chances are you've read it. Or, lately, watched it. Starting out as an online sports journalist, Tom Eaton has become one of South Africa's recognised writers (and outspoken haters of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Da Vinci Code'). From his now defunct Mail and Guardian column and novels ('The De Villiers Code' and 'Texas') to film screenplays ('More Than Just A Game') and TV shows ('Van Der Walt's Fault), he's dabbled in just about everything — except, perhaps, greeting cards or the "did you know" facts in Chappies wrappers.

And amid all that writing, he's turned out a third novel, the masterful 'The Wading'. We speak to Eaton about his most serious book yet, equestrian white mischief, burning Dan Brown's little offering, Weet Bix, and actually getting people to read.

You don't like 'Harry Potter' or 'The Da Vinci Code' – that much is quite obvious. If you were a dictator, what books would you ban? Or burn ceremoniously?

I don't think the modern dictator has anything to fear from books. Besides I've also learned that the publishing world is a gigantic pyramid. At the top are the Nobel Prize winners, with little dwarf stars (or black holes, depending on your taste) of literary fiction, read by relatively few people. The further down you go, the fatter the books get, and the more people read them. Near the bottom, supporting the entire structure, are bodice-rippers, schlock-horror, equestrian white mischief, and conspiracies by the Catholic Church. I don't particularly like those sorts of fiction, but without them, and the tens of millions of people who do like them, there wouldn't a publishing industry. It's no good writing a good literary novel if you have to print it yourself and only your parents and the neighbours get to read it.

As for the latter, I fully intended to burn my copy of 'The Da Vinci Code' after I read it, but it got mashed into the carpet of my car, and because it was a mess I didn't want to fish it out, so it got greasy, then soggy, then mouldy, and then eventually I threw it in the bin. That was probably a more fitting end for it than on a pyre.

What books would you make compulsory reading?

Grudgingly, none. There's always the despot in you that is outraged that people don't conform to your tastes, but unfortunately reading needs to be free of that sort of martial law. The moment you make reading compulsory you turn it into a sort of chore, an improving ordeal administered by nannies. In fact it's the books that suffer more than the press-ganged readers: anyone who's ever tried to "do" a beautiful and delicate novel with schoolchildren or university students will know that once a novel is jammed into that particular sausage machine, it is wrecked forever.

However, I do wish that people would put aside their prejudices and try to read the classics — anything from Jane Austen to William Golding. I think the popularity of film adaptations of Austen's novels, and the fact that almost every new British comedy is basically 'Pride and Prejudice' disguised as Ricky Gervais, prove that great stories don't date. But much more than a cracking plot and refreshing intelligence, they give you a dose of empathy. Reading teaches children how to consider the world through someone else's eyes, to feel concern for interests other than their own. And for those who say the classics are difficult or boring, I say: do better!

How do we encourage people to read? Even Minki van der Westhuizen's reading campaign seems to have died…

Catch them young. By the time they're seven and going to school it's probably too late. Of course there are always exceptions who discover reading in their teens or even as adults, but I suspect these are a tiny minority. Get them as babies. I have an 11-month nephew who can't get enough of books. He was read to before he was born, and now he's a book junky, poring over his cardboard barnyard stories for ages. I believe you can make readers, just as you can make nice children and horrible children.

We're all encouraged to believe that children are angels, little unique miracles, and all you have to do to turn them into miraculous adults is keep them fed and clothed. This is nonsense. Children are wild animals. Left to their own devices, they'll devolve into TV-watching, junk-food eating, hair-pulling cretins. Even the placid ones, who are sweet and considerate babies, will nonetheless end up wedging pigs heads on sticks and killing fat boys if left to work out answers by themselves. Parents go to great pains to teach their tinies to brush their teeth and wash their hands and eat their greens, and yet reading — the mental equivalent of brushing your teeth — is left to underpaid and often unmotivated teachers.

I sometimes think that structured, sustained indoctrination (brainwashing, for want of a better word) has been hugely underestimated as a force for good. People tend to start edging away from me when I say this, but the fact is we're being brainwashed constantly — you only need to look at the nightmarish messages about femininity and the role of women that are being stuffed into little girls' heads in almost every single television and print ad. Obviously brainwashing has been used as a method of state control, but why not use the same techniques to instill a culture of literacy?

The old Eastern Bloc was an abomination, but consider their phenomenal success in teaching maths and science. Young children entered their teens gagging to be physicists, mathematicians, or astronauts. Yes, it probably came at the expense of all sorts of things, but it's not as if your average bored, angry, neglected, wealthy child is doing much else that's worthwhile. Why not bombard young children with the message that reading is good? Ask any 10-year-old what the best cross trainers in the world are, and he or she will rattle off a terrifying list of brand names and specifications. That level of interest didn't come from nowhere: that kid was told to care about cross-trainers — every day — and now he does. Simple as that.

But of course all this is theoretical. The practical reality in South Africa is that we have two very different sets of non-readers. The first are wealthy kids, and by wealthy I mean anyone who has their own bedroom, a bedside light, a school library or their own books, and time to read. There is absolutely no excuse for these children not to be reading, and this failing needs to be placed squarely at the feet of their parents.

The second group forms the vast majority of our non-readers, and these are our urban and rural poor. I don't know what the solution here is, and it probably has very little to do with literacy or education and a lot to do with poverty relief. Even if reading is encouraged by poorer parents (and it often isn't), and if there are parents present (and there often aren't) there simply aren't the basics in place to foster a love of reading, thing like relative comfort, quiet, privacy, or artificial light. Most readers will know that childhood pleasures of curling up with a book before lights-out. This is physically impossible for the majority of our country's children.

Is there any one book that made you want to become an author?

No. I always wanted to write, and it was only when I was nine or 10, after I'd spent a couple of years imagining a life spent in writing gigantically fat books, that I discovered there was such a thing as "an author". I still don't think of myself as an author, simply because in order to pay the rent you end up doing dozens of things every year, with fiction writing often crowded out by more commercially viable projects.

You have written books, columns, film screenplays, TV comedy, magazine articles, reports for sports websites… Is there anything you haven’t tried or would still like to try? And what (if anything) did you learn from writing for a sports site?

I've tried poetry, and I'm genuinely bad at it. I suppose I've also never tried real journalism, because I'm not energetic or earnest enough to put in the hours required.

My years at the sports site were fascinating, but also deeply depressing. They taught me that people spend way too much time on the internet, and are very very angry. It was a very unpleasant glimpse into a world full of people who are good at nothing except feeling hard-done-by and assassinating each others' characters. It also taught me just how little corporate-run sport really matters. Yes, it's a multi-zillion dollar industry, but so are Barbie and Disney. Sport is still meaningful, but only when it's played for it's own sake or as an excuse to see friends, without an audience, and without pay.

Does this additional writing detract from writing novels? Or does it all feed off each other?

If I could just write novels, I would. One a year, that would earn just enough to keep me in Weet Bix and printer toner, with a week away somewhere leafy in the Overberg in the autumn. Unfortunately that's completely impossible, given the economics of publishing in South Africa. I would be very surprised if there were more than five or six writers in this country who exist purely on royalties from novels.

Do you miss writing your M&G column, and having the weekly opportunity to vent or get your opinions out there?

I miss it about once a month, when some sideshow freak in government speaks out of their lower intestine. The other three weeks I'm happy just to let things slide. However I haven't left "current affairs" completely, as I oversee content on the local answer to the The Onion, www.hayibo.com. It's technically satire, but really we just want to make people laugh — no angry rants, just good clean bullshit.

You once wrote: "Writing a column, one quickly realises, is like doing stand-up comedy in a soundproofed box in a theatre with the lights turned off." Surely, writing a book is even more so?

In a way, but the main difference is that a column is written for a real audience with specific tastes, but when I write fiction it's for an imaginary audience comprising a thousand clones of myself. If there are three or four people out there who read it as I hoped it would be read, and who enjoyed it, then that's all I can ask for.

When writing a book, do you set aside specific time in the day to work on it, do you write in fits and starts, or do you retreat somewhere into a writing frenzy?

Yes. All three, and then nine more.

'The Wading' is very different from your previous two books — insofar as it's not meant to be funny. Are you worried how people will respond to that change?

I think people are fairly adaptable in their reading tastes. I hope to bring some old fans with me, but I also hope to gather some new ones.

Your previous books were clearly meant to entertain. What was your intention with this one?

Entertainment is a broad church. I think the previous ones were meant to make people laugh. This one will entertain in a different way. For me, it's a more satisfying sort of entertainment.

Your natural inclination seems to be to write humorous pieces. Was it a concerted effort or particularly difficult to change your style for 'The Wading'?

Comedy paid the rent very nicely, but I really don't have a particular preference. I am lucky to be able to write relatively funny pieces relatively easily, but I find more complicated writing much more satisfying. So as for the effort it took to write 'The Wading', I suppose my answer would be the same as most people who've written a novel: some of it was extremely heavy going, and some of it wrote itself, but most of it just went along at the right pace and with a pleasant amount of exertion.

The book started out as an MA project supervised by JM Coetzee. What did you learn from him during the process? And how does the finished novel differ from your thesis?

I learned how to be critical, but I also gained confidence. Intelligent criticism of a work in progress is hugely energising, because it is based on assumption that the critic acknowledges your ability to string sentences together. As for changes, this version is exactly the same but completely different. I think if you rewrite the same narrative every five years for fifty years, you'd have ten utterly different novels, that are all the same.

What research did you do? The island setting is described in detail, but the story is very vague when it comes to details like the year and actual location. Was it your intention to shroud the story in mystery? Is there a specific country you had in mind when writing? And are the main characters, Stephen Bee and Mr Muller, based on anyone in particular?

Very vague? Gosh, I'd hoped I'd described it better than that! I did no research, because Cape Formosa is an imagined place. It's not important to know very much about it, only how it looks and smells and feels. As for whether or not Steven and Muller are based on real people, does it matter? I don't think it does. They are who they are in the book, and that's really all.

This is probably difficult to single out, but what was the most difficult aspect of writing 'The Wading'?

Writing is can be difficult and frustrating, but ultimately it's a giant indulgence. I want to write because it feels good. Asking about difficult aspects is a bit like asking me to single out difficult aspects of an overseas holiday. Yes, I missed a train once or twice, and it rained in Venice. But it was Venice, for God's sake!