I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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