I had a tough childhood, yes. I was born in rural Bangladesh to parents who had had no education beyond high school. We moved to the UK where I grew up in poverty, in some of the worst conditions in a developed economy, before moving to the projects - heaven - and I went to unremarkable schools before going to university. My father was a bus conductor first and then a waiter, and my mother a seamstress.

Writing is indeed essential to me. I have been writing for a long time but not for publication. I'm sure there are many, many people who do the same. The rewards of writing are in the process and not the product - not just for me but for others I have met.

I'm interested in how a person forms her beliefs, how that happens. Beliefs of all kinds make up the animating force in each of us. Without them we would be paralyzed, lifeless - the glove without the hand.

Experience belongs to the actor, but the story belongs to the teller. We write so we will never forget.

The mathematics is the odd one, odd because I'm not sure how to measure its effect. It is so fundamental to my outlook on everything and yet I'm not even sure how. It must be because in my formative years it was everything to me, the single place of beauty in my life, and of breathtaking beauty at that. I still believe that pure mathematics is the most creative thing that humanity does, though I am no longer a part of it.

I am at my happiest when I'm problem solving and a large part of writing is for me a lovely labor in problem solving. Every act of discovery in writing involves a process of figuring out why I'm not seeing what I need to see. Niggling feelings, discomforts, a sense that you've forgotten or overlooked something, a sudden curiosity about what if here? - these are priceless. They are the bases of problems and lead the way.

There was a period of a few months, however, when I had a dreadful physical pain. I had just started writing a particular section of the novel and was initially worried that it would affect my work. I was woken by awful nightmares; I saw several doctors, tests were performed, nothing came of them, and the medics were mystified.It was two days after I finished writing the section that the penny dropped. The pain had suddenly disappeared and so too had the nightmares. I'd got things muddled. The pain and the nightmares were both psychosomatic.