I feel engaged with young people in Pakistan. But that said, it's still a small minority that reads novels, literary fiction. But it isn't necessarily a small minority of the wealthy elite in the city of Lahore. It can often be and I often do meet at literary festivals students who've ridden a bus 12 hours from a very small town just to hear some of their favorite writers come and speak.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

Novels are make-believe and play for adults.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.

The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.