Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

I would not be at all surprised to find out . . . that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.

In Shanghai, I saw great contrasts. On one street there would be impressive shops selling copies of the latest word in glamorous European fashion, and around the corner on a back street there were poor families crammed into one room with a naked light bulb. One evening I heard a Chinese family singing "Happy Birthday." It was weird. You would have thought that they'd have their own happy birthday song. Every dominant society in the world - whether it's French or British or American - imposes its culture on less developed societies.

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is my experience of life.

Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

Writers brought up in Africa have many advantages - being at the center of a modern battlefield; part of a society in rapid, dramatic change. But in a long run it can also be a handicap: to wake up every morning with one's eyes on a fresh evidence of inhumanity; to be reminded twenty times a day of injustice, and always the same brand of it, can be limiting.