This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.

Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.

your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house.

[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.

Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity.

So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.