When the forces are aligning against hybridity, it harms everyone, as we are all migrants. Growing up in Pakistan, I know just how oppressive that kind of puritanical mindset can be.

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.'

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state.

I feel no desire to write a novel that takes place in the past.

I was terribly wounded by my wife's death.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

The first Romanov ruler was just 16 when he was crowned Tsar Michael I in Moscow in 1613, thus ending the 'Time of Troubles' sparked by Ivan the Terrible's death.

The illness, and the untimely death of my brothers, has made me conscious of the fact that - rather than just think about it - it's crucial that you do today what you want to do.