I read "The Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diz Del Castillo, which I recommend to a lot of people. He was an eyewitness of [Hernando] Cortez's conquest of Mexico. It's at once very brutal and at times very plodding. It tells what they did everyday, so days can go by and nothing happens. Then all of the sudden they are torturing and doing all these dark things.

I read "The Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diz Del Castillo, which I recommend to a lot of people. He was an eyewitness of [Hernando] Cortez's conquest of Mexico. It's at once very brutal and at times very plodding. It tells what they did everyday, so days can go by and nothing happens. Then all of the sudden they are torturing and doing all these dark things.

There is a insularity within American fiction even for adults. It's very tough for books in translation in the US.

Thing that was very different for me is that an American child's reading is filled with Americans.

The ones that were relevant while I wrote my book were books like "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, which is based on a historical fact, "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow, and "True History of the Kelly Gang" by Peter Carey.

The universe had an odd sense of fairness; it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for.

Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.