I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.

I was writing the Paraguay book, a Paragauyan told me that only five thousand people in Paraguay read.

I don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.

We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.

I slightly feel, having written Paraguay and Newfoundland - and both of them have developed eccentricities through isolation - I am quite relieved to be back in France and Germany, and I want people to enjoy these books for the writing and not because they feel they can laugh - some will laugh - at these eccentric places, that's not what I intend.