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

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

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

The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.

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.