For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.

I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.

In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind.

At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.