I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.