Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

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.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

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.

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

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

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.