American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that

I think all writing is done through memory

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course

That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.