I've been wanting to write a book about what goes into creating a novel, and the story behind 'A Passage to India' is especially interesting.

Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.

Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too.

India I have visited a great many times, though there is a lot about it I will never understand.

Real obsession needs an unconscious motivation behind it.

'Arctic Summer,' as you might know, is the title of Forster's one unfinished novel.