Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

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 have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.

I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.

Buenos Aires is my favorite city. I think it's fantastic - but is a troubled, sort of psychologically troubled city.

I'll always love Paraguay. It's this most exotic place configured out of the imagination, the whole country.Paraguay will always be a special place in my heart. I go back a long way. I first arrived as a refugee in 1982 from the Falklands War. So it was a safe haven then, and it has become something exotic since then. I feel like I'd like the dust to settle a little bit before going back.