For me, that's always been one of the great charms of the first person: we gain access to a very personal, private kind of music.

In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.

We arrived the way most emigrant families did. My father came first, and the rest of us - my mother, my sister and me - followed a year later.

I've always been a private person, and I've always valued my private life.

I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

I think my parents recognised that I'd always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn't think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.