As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.