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.

I'm definitely post-something.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.

The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.

If I were dead, then nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of my security and whether or not I merited such special treatment for so long.

I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal.