I question whether I want to be integrated into America as it stands now, with its complacency and materialism, its soullessness.

A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice.

Once a great wrong has been done, it never dies. People speak the words of peace, but their hearts do not forgive. Generations perform ceremonies of reconciliation but there is no end.

I question whether I want to be integrated into America as it stands now, with its complacency and materialism, its soullessness.

Perhaps she was both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death - all the opposites contained and reconciled in her.

I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a vital form. Not only does it allow for the kind of full-blown, richly detailed writing that I love . . . but it permits me to operate on many levels and to explore both the inner state of my characters as well as the worlds beyond them.

But sometimes it's necessary to go back before you can go forward, really forward.