When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

In the mess of moving from place to place, I skipped two grades in the space of one year.

I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.

A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.