Immediately recognised for his brilliant, sordid and uncompromising imagination, Damien Hirst is the most celebrated artist Britain has produced for generations. The undisputed leader and originator of the dominant movement in contemporary art on both sides of the Atlantic, he is now so ingrained in the public consciousness that even people with only a passing interest in art are familiar with his notorious shark and pickled sheep. What few people outside his immediate circle know are his brilliance as a talker, and the incisiveness and uniquely skewed nature of his mind. Gordon Burn met Hirst for the first time nine years ago. They both admired David Sylvester's interviews with Francis Bacon and Jan Wenner's interviews with John Lennon, and there was always an unspoken understanding between them that they would do something similar when the time was right. The resulting conversations in Gambler are electrifyingly candid. True to the undertaking Hirst gave Burn, there is no off-limits: here are Hirst's thoughts on celebrity, money, art, alcohol, sex, death, the North of England, class, crime and cocaine; his views on Charles Saatchi, David Bowie, David Hockney, Salman Rushdie, Jarvis Cocker, Gilbert and George and Lucian Freud. More than any other individual, Damien Hirst's art and life came to define the nineties. Like the generation he has become the spokesman for, Gambler is brave, unpredictable, scabrously funny and corrosively intelligent. It is also a how-to guide to becoming the most famous artist in the world.

'I want it to be revealing. I'll talk about anything you like. I want it to be truthful. Let's do it. There is no off-limits. I'm afraid of nothing.'

Gordon Burn is the author of two novels, Alma Cogan (winner of the Whitbread First Novel Prize) and Fullalove. He is also the author of three works of non-fiction, Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son, Pocket Money and Happy Like Murderers. His new novel will be published by Faber next year.