Jonathan Safran Foer and I are sitting at the table in the back of his kitchen, on a bright, sunny, global-warmed winter day (that is, it's a happy sort of sunny, but I'm pretty sure we should be sad about it). This visit is like any other visit to his kitchen – which is one mile straight down the road from mine, in Brooklyn. The only thing that's oddly, noticeably out of place, is that I'm wearing a blue blazer and I've shaved (and Jonathan's really shaved; the last time I saw him he had a huge black beard – I mean a real lumberjack, or hipster, or rabbinical beard, depending on your point-of-view). The blazer and the preening are a nod to the fact that there's a photographer with us, who, for the purpose of this introduction, as is traditional, I'm going to pretend isn't here. (But where else do the pictures of these intimate conversations in people's kitchens come from? So, thank you, Tim.) And, one more difference, Jonathan and I usually talk about other things – anything, actually – other than the literary, craft-based matters we're addressing. Today we're discussing our first experiences reading each other's work. We're talking about my new book of stories, – What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank , (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) which is out this week, about the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of Jonathan's novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and the play I've been writing for The Public Theater. Also, for most of our sit-up-straight conversation, Jonathan and his wife's (the novelist, Nicole Krauss) truly massive dog George (as in George Plimpton) is nuzzling up and nosing around, and begging to be petted, which I'm happy to do. George's presence is an apt metaphor for our soon-to-be-published joint project, Haggadah (Penguin) which Jonathan envisioned, edited, and talked me into spending the last few years translating into English. Back in 2004, I'd stopped by Jonathan and Nicole's house on the day they'd adopted a tiny mixed-breed puppy that wasn't supposed to grow, as she has, to the wrong side of 100 pounds. As for the Haggadah/George metaphor: here is something that starts out sweet, grows larger and more ungainly to deal with than you'd ever imagine, and, with a little training, a bit of love and a few years hard work, turns, in the end, into a companion you're quite happy to have around.

Nathan Englander How did we first meet? We first met on J-Date.

Jonathan Safran Foer No, actually, I'm not sure you even know this. I had a friend in college – a brilliant guy, a poet, great at writing and terrible at life – and he said, you should read For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, it's really good. And it was the first book I'd bought as an independent person in the world. When did it come out? Was it '99?

NE Yes. I was 29.

JSF And I graduated in '99. Anyway, so I read it, and I ended up finding my agent because in it you thanked your agent. And then we met.

NE My first mental picture of you, or maybe it's my first picture of you as Writer Guy, was at the Russian Tea Room, at your book party.

JSF Your first book suggested something was possible that I didn't know before: a young Jewish American, writing about the experience of Orthodox Judaism – and other kinds of American and Jewish experiences – in a way that I recognised and that didn't feel corny or sentimental but just the opposite. Usually when encountering Jewish culture, the question would be: is there any unembarrassing way in which to pull this toward my life? But then in art, you want to find something that is ahead of your life, that you want to pull yourself toward. I remember when I read your book, I read it in an aspirational way. I don't just mean as a young writer – I didn't even think of myself as a young writer then – but as a reader.

NE This is funny. We talk all the time, but mostly not about writing like this. We usually support each other through teasing, rather than saying nice things about each other. I'm always shying away from the description "Jewish" writer, but it's really just about voice. I read a lot and don't finish a lot, and fall in love with things rarely, but voice is the one thing that's beyond learning – the one thing that you cannot fake, that you cannot learn or gimcrack your way into. Jonathan's has always been a unique voice, but it's also an erasure. Some people write with great intimacy. Jonathan has a supreme capacity to put emotion in his work.

JSF So, we just got the book – the new translation of the Haggadah – this week.

NE Yes, and I can't believe we're both sitting here, because we've spent so many years on this project. More than three years ago, you said to me: it's going to be a lovely project. I don't know if anyone else could have talked me into this. Translating it has been three years of my life. It's different from fiction. I have a book of stories just out and I would never say: oh, look at these! But this is a different interaction. We're showing respect for something that is not ours, that we made, that we're part of.

JSF Yes. I don't think either of us ever felt like it was our own work. It ended up being, in so many ways, a more conservative project than I thought it was going to be. And the origin of that was respect for the book, for what the Haggadah is. And part of that was we took it very personally, but there's always a danger that writing can become narcissistic, because you can't help but feel that everything is reflecting back on you.

NE Because it is.

JSF But this was a different kind of project. I know exactly what you mean when you say you can hold it and feel a kind of unabashed pride that you just couldn't feel with a book of your own.

NE Your obligation is to the story. During those years between your first and second book – you have less time to remember those years than I do – people ask: how is it to follow up your first book? And all you can say is, if you're going to be a writer then that's part of the writing life and you have to learn. My point is, you have to learn where your work is and your role in it. So, this book is a product of a certain new freedom – it's not only Jonathan talking me into doing this translation. I'm a failed atheist and I work really hard at being an atheist, but I always say writing is a moral act, even though we're all perverted and drunks. If you don't know what good and evil is you can't tell a story that someone else can read. So if you're looking at a project that is essentially 90% biblical translation, you can't not think – especially as I grew up reading the Hebrew – that the majority of people using this are going to be actually praying to God. The idea of touching this material was almost overwhelming, until I understood something: if you want to believe that the Bible is the word of God as told to Moses, that's fine. But take the King James Bible – God didn't write that, someone chose each of those words. It wasn't going to happen ever if I didn't commit to saying this is the word that goes with that word. It was so overwhelming that it became freeing.

JSF I think it's also something about the book itself that calls out for new versions, new interpretations. I don't know if there's a book that has been redone more times.

NE I doubt it.

JSF So it doesn't require the same kind of presumption that translating Genesis would. The point of a seder is to engage people; it's just a meaningless ritual if it doesn't engage people. Part of engaging people is asking contemporary questions, speaking in a contemporary idiom. I don't mean speaking idiomatically but in a way that contemporary readers will respond to. That was one of the balances. And it was really interesting: how do you write something that will have meaning to contemporary readers while maintaining the reverential tone of the book?

Nathan, you did 95% of the work. We were not actively collaborating. The book is a lot of moving parts and Nathan's is the biggest part. When I think of my role as editor, it's not really working with you: it was kind of piecing things together, seeing what the best form of the book would be. I was trying to email 20 people who wrote for the book whose writing didn't appear in the final version. The kill fees for the book are bigger than the fees paid to writers who are in there.

NE It's Jonathan's vision for the book. I went off and did the translation. It's the little stuff that ends up being giant in something like this. At the end, we had these wonderful arguments over every single line, every word. There were arguments about conjunctions. When you say moving parts it's hard to picture. I never like when books have 20 pages of acknowledgments – don't accept the Oscar until it's been given. But the point is, I did not realise I was going to become so deeply passionate about this. In the past, when I looked at other English translations, I never really looked. And when I did look at them, I thought: that's not what it says to me. The best example I have is the Hebrew phrase often translated as "between Sabbath and the holidays" – all the readers just fell asleep and fell off their chairs. But what I think it says in Hebrew is "between holy and holy"; it's not between this day and that. This book is so beautiful, I really feel you should read it and weep. It's a poem.

JSF I didn't actually approach it from a position of faith. It's funny, it never came up. The best response I ever heard to the question of faith was: "I'm agnostic about the answer but I'm also agnostic about the question." What are you asking, really? Is it possible for us to understand the question the same way? If you say, do you believe in God, what do you mean by believe and what do you mean by God? I mean, there's a way you could describe God, where both of us say "yes", and there's a way you could describe God where both of us would say "no". So faith was not something that drove this whole thing at all; it was not something that was on my mind. It's probably the best-known story, in the world, across cultures. It is an aesthetically rich story. And it's a story that transmits values in often subtle and very powerful ways. I was thinking of it like that, as a historical document and as an ethical document.

NE People want you to have the positions they want you to have. This is where being a storyteller crosses every field. All that matters is: how do I represent this, how do I do this justice?

NE I wasn't looking to revisit the story "The 27th Man" [for a stage version in collaboration with Nora Ephron]. To me it was Nora's vision for it; I really don't think anyone else could have talked me into it. It was so nice of her to wait. She suggested the project and I said: I'll be right back, and didn't touch it for a full 10 years. Just a short decade. I think for me the break-free moment was – again, I had no concept of drama, no background or anything – once it started to make demands as a play, once it stopped being a story and started being a play. That for me was epiphanic. I knew what I was working on. Even if the exact same things happen, they're not the same thing on stage as on the page. Maybe that segues into how Jonathan feels about movies. It doesn't reach back in time and space.

JSF I didn't really have that experience, because I didn't write my movie adaptations. I was glad to be doing it, but it wasn't a creative experience.

NE My question is: can you really separate it out in your head? Were you on box office mojo when Extremely Loud [starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Max von Sydow] was released? Are you looking at reviews?

JSF I'm not, and there are a couple of reasons. One is that I don't really understand any of that stuff. What's good or bad. I mean I know if a review is good or bad, but does it matter? With books I avoid things, actively – it's a protective mechanism.

NE Yes, I know that.

JSF With this, it's not that I'm not curious, I just don't know how that world works.

NE But is that because you're much better than me at compartmentalising?

JSF I don't think so. With a book, it's you and your agent and maybe your publisher. But Warner Brothers has thousands of employees, whose singular job it is to track this. Whatever it is, will be – I can't influence it. I didn't have script approval, I wouldn't even want it.

NE All you asked was that Max Von Sydow not be cast.

JSF [laughs]. No, for me, you enter into it and relinquish your right to complain about it. Other people are trying to do their best to make a good film. So, I didn't feel proprietorial about it. And that's partly because I just wouldn't want to write that book any more.

NE It's rarely that something is so emotionally and historically of the moment. Again, work should be timeless, and a novel can't be like milk which, if you leave it out, is going to spoil. But in terms of books where you can look into someone's head and say: this is so of this time – Extremely Loud was very early, I have to say. You seem to have processed 9/11 so quickly. I haven't been back for 10 years and I feel like I'm just ready to think about Israel now. We were still living 9/11 when you were absorbing it.

JSF Journalists were writing about it the next day. That day. I think you have an anxiety about writing fiction "too soon". The price paid by bad journalism is that we went to war. But if a novelist gets it wrong – first of all, a novelist can't get it wrong in the same way.

NE A novelist can't get it wrong in the same way, but oh, so much wronger.

JSF Yes, but what's the price? A bad novel. It's not the end of the world.

NE One of the nicest things about writing is that I always feel like I'm starting again. I often see things in a negative light, but this is one of the positive things: I don't think there are many careers where you could feel each time, "OK, now I'm ready to start". The Ministry of Special Cases took me a decade, but I wrote most of this collection this year while I was doing other projects. So time has changed for me now. You have someone like Marilynne Robinson, who people say took 18 years to write Gilead, though of course the actual writing time might be 18 months. There's no such thing as writer's block. I don't know anyone who's sitting there typing actively who can't get work done. I know people who are so overwhelmed they walk away from the machine and can't engage. And I think so much of it is about waiting for the moment where whatever is cooking is cooked and you can just execute it. Like "Sister Hills" [one of the stories in the new collection] or my new book – that's like a five-year story for me, but it turns out that this time it was more like five weeks than five years. It's only with writing that time investment is measured in that way. With writing you're supposed to feel: I slaved, my nail beds were bleeding, my eyes were bleeding. It's really strange, this reverse thing. Oh, this old thing? I just threw it on. So the title story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank", I had been carrying that around for years … I keep thinking of this Edward P Jones interview I read 100 years ago, where he was working Kafka-style on a project – working as a clerk as a day job and dreaming of this book for 16 years. And I would think: did you really do that in your head? But I had the idea for this story 20 years ago. I still drafted a ton. But I feel like it's a reflex to say I drafted compulsively and it took a million years. I got my commas in place, although it's for the reader to decide that, but the point is it was ready when I wrote it.

JSF I do like the film of Extremely Loud. It's a very complicated question because it's my book. But I cried over the film; it actually moved me.

NE I'm happy to hear you say that on the record. Because last night I did a Selected Shorts night and I'm sitting there and I'm so moved by my story being read out, and I knew I was going to have to go on stage in a minute, and one cannot be misty-eyed about one's own work. Even though it's recognising other artforms. So I was thanking the actors in the green room afterwards, for their amazing work, but it's hard to get up there afterwards and not emote …

JSF So yeah, I didn't see the film like other people see it, but I enjoyed it.

NE You didn't see it like other people see it because they don't usually stand up at the end and scream "I WROTE THAT".

JSF Yeah. And clap when my name comes up.

NE Hey, we didn't say anything scatological, that has to be a record.

• Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer were talking to Emma Brockes.