I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.

I have been obsequious toward Western civilization, exaggerating its merits and, at the same time, exaggerating my own merits.

My own military background is wholly un-distinguished. I was a sergeant.

It's about process, the process of growth. It seems to me in my own life - and other minds throughout history have also observed this phenomenon - that growth seems to move in two directions at the same time.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There's nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world - like we are called the Third World.