I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

I am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.