I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.

The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.