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.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.

I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.

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

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.