Dave Eggers is a writer, publisher and humanitarian campaigner. He has written 14 books, including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What, The Circle and Heroes of the Frontier. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the writer Vendela Vida, and their two children. His new novel, The Parade, tells the story of the role played by two visitors in a nation’s fragile peace.

Where did the idea for The Parade come from?

Back in 2006, I was in [what is now] South Sudan with Valentino Achak Deng [the refugee whose life story Eggers told in What Is the What] and we were near Aweil, driving on some pretty rough dirt roads, when we came upon a giant six-lane highway being built, connecting Aweil to Khartoum. We were surprised to see it was being built by a Swedish company. That stuck in my mind a bit, the oddity of this Scandinavian crew building a road in a post-conflict zone – a road that might some day be used to facilitate military incursions. After that, whenever I saw foreign contractors in post-conflict zones, I was fascinated by their role and what kind of awareness or sense of responsibility they might have toward the implications of their projects.

It is tempting to see the book as a comment on American intervention or western colonialism…

I don’t think we or any western country has a monopoly on this kind of thing. Chinese contractors are all over Africa, for example, building roads and bridges and pipelines. Some are beneficial, some facilitate horrific exploitation. Often it’s a bit of both. But always there are these workers who have been dropped into a foreign land with a specific task to do, and they often have to make a conscious choice to ignore the larger context and the ramifications of their work.

Does the road the protagonists are building have any connection in your mind to Donald Trump’s proposed US-Mexico border wall?

I thought of the wall while writing it. I visited the border wall samples in San Diego – the ones they just tore down – and when Homeland Security gave us the tour, they insisted we take no pictures of the workers constructing the walls. The workers were afraid, I guess, of the political fallout of being identified with a controversial project. Their part in even this small aspect of the proposed wall was fascinating to me.

You recently wrote a piece for the Guardian about Trump’s prospects in 2020. Why do you think he might win again?

His support is so much broader than we are often told. I went to his rally in El Paso, and more than 50% of people there were of colour. That woke me up, and should give pause to anyone who believes he’ll be easy to beat. His appeal, though unfathomable to so many, is wide and deep.

What can liberal America do to turn back the tide?

Winning in 2020 will be tough, because no matter what kind of lunatic is in the White House, running against a strong economy is extremely hard. The people I interviewed in El Paso were far more concerned with their jobs and [pensions] than healthcare, wages, rising rents, the cost of gas, things like that.

The dystopian vision of a hyper-connected world without privacy that you depicted in your 2013 novel The Circle appears almost to have come true. What can we do to mitigate the threat the tech giants pose to our freedom?

We have so much power as consumers. We know Facebook is a very bad actor that repeatedly lies about its data collection and has shown no remorse and no respect for privacy or even decency. So when we continue to use the platform, we’re tacitly endorsing their way of doing business. It’s so easy to switch to a format, like MeWe, that does everything Facebook does but without the towering abuses of power.

Your literacy project, 826 Valencia, has become a US-wide charity and has inspired similar writing and tutoring programmes across the world. Why do you think it is important to encourage young people to write?

Reading is knowledge, but writing is power. For the historically disempowered – young people in general – if they learn to express themselves effectively they can write themselves into positions of influence. This is what our new project, the International Congress of Youth Voices, is all about.

As the proprietor of your own publishing house, McSweeney’s, do you see a future for the printed word?

Generally speaking, the book industry, at least on our small scale, is healthy. We’re not growing, but we’re not dying, either. McSweeney’s, at the moment, employs five people. It’s small, but because there are readers who love the physical book, we can do our thing without existential dread.

These are dark times. What gives you hope or makes you laugh?

Being around young people is the balm to all psychic wounds and worry. I did an event in New York a few days ago with four young activists, all in their teens and part of the International Congress of Youth Voices, and it left us all feeling shot through with adrenaline and hope. I think we have to find ways to support them, and follow their lead. Because sometimes we adults are tired.

What can adults learn from young people?

The thing I love about high-school idealists is that they are largely free of self-doubt and overthinking. They see a wrong and they go at it. Adults – even college students – too often equivocate and drown themselves in process and procedure over results. After Parkland, those high schoolers had the courage and moral clarity that most politicians in the US haven’t had with regard to guns. They earned the right to lead us on that issue, and they should, too, lead us on so many issues, like climate change, that will affect them more than any other demographic. We are borrowing this world, so they should be able to set a framework for the use of this planet until they inherit it.

• The Parade is published on 21 March by Hamish Hamilton (£14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99