Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth.

History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.

A book is not completed till it's read.

If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.

England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.

There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again.