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!

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.

I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

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

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

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