A novel can grant humanity even to those who act inhumanely, and by making men and women of monsters, it can offer not only a ground-level view of a particular conflict, but a descent into the substratum of human nature capable of the incomprehensible.

While looking up news from the North Caucasus on Twitter, I was linked to the sanguinely titled 'Seven Wonders of Chechnya Tour' on the website of Chechnya Travel, the postwar republic's first tourism outfit, founded in 2012.

To make a book convincing, it's less important that the right tree be in the right place than that the characters are emotionally real.

The idea that fiction can capture the stories that fall through the cracks of history informed 'A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,' which progresses across the two Chechen Wars of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

We stand for getting government out of the way, letting people make good decisions for themselves, in education, returning power to school boards and to teachers and to parents so they can educate the children.

Each co-operative institution will become a school of business in which each member will acquire a knowledge of the laws of trade and commerce.

With traditional school visits, I also get to speak with people who haven't read my books and talk about my writing process as well as the serious aspects I write about.