Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will belies waiting on the road ahead.

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.

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.

Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner.

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

In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.