I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

My mother has been to Mecca to perform her hajj; my dad hasn't. I come from a very liberal family, so even the people who are outwardly religious tend to subscribe to gender equality, the importance of open-mindedness, all that stuff. My family is generally nonprescriptive.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

Novel writing is solitary work.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.

I am a strong believer in the intertwined nature of the personal and the political; I think they move together.