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

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

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

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.

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