Why did you move to Beijing? I'd decided to leave my job at a law firm and was pondering my options. Looking over my portfolio, I realized that a case I'd litigated in China had been the most interesting of my career, so I began researching how I could expand my China practice. I spoke with a broad array of individuals in government, private practice, business and the academy, in China and in the States, and I concluded that, whatever I ended up doing, if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to learn Mandarin Chinese. So I moved to Beijing to study Mandarin full-time for a year. By the end of that year, I'd begun writing my first novel, and I'd simultaneously become less enthused about practicing law in China. Having just invested significant energy becoming proficient in a foreign language, and finding myself in a cosmopolitan city with a low cost of living, I stayed in Beijing and committed myself to novel writing. Why do you travel so much? I feel that the planet is my home, and I need to look in all the closets. I really do want to go everywhere on earth, the more remote and inaccessible, the more appealing. That said, I'm not a huge fan of being a tourist. I like to travel by living somewhere and endeavoring to become, if not a "local," than at least an expatriate with a clue. Humanitarian and development jobs that take me into new countries and cultures are a very satisfying vehicle (from my perspective) for this type of travel. What's your favorite book? I have two favorite books, D.M. Thomas' The White Hotel, and Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North. I have read them both repeatedly. Although these two books are quite different, they both take place against the epic sweep of history from the late nineteenth century into the first half of the twentieth century, and they both show male authors writing about sexually-powerful female characters for whom they have profound empathy. Both books also use poetry or poetic devices to create powerful visceral responses, techniques which I find deeply moving and for which I have tremendous admiration. Who's your favorite author? I don't have a favorite author, but many authors have exerted influence on me. Among them: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Gordon Lord Byron, Samuel Coleridge, George Elliot, Henry James, E.M. Forster, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Stella Gibbons, Jorgé Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Philip Roth, John Kennedy O'Toole, James Baldwin, Thomas Rogers, Alan Hollinghurst, Kay Ryan, Roberto Bolano, Mario Vargas Llosa. Why are there so few women and minority authors in your list of influences? My list (currently) is heavily British and favors non-contemporary fiction. The reasons for this selection are numerous. One is that I have very little in the way of formal literary education, and my reading has been haphazard and uneven. Consequently, I don't have the breadth of influences that a better educated novelist might have. Another is that I'm particularly intrigued by the developments that novels underwent during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries in England: the transition of storytelling from public (plays) to private (novels) occurred largely during this time, and the ramifications for language, plot structure and psychological depth are dramatic. What's a "literary mentor" and how did you find yours? My literary mentor is D.M. Thomas, a novelist, poet and blogger who lives in Cornwall, England. I first contacted him via a cold-call e-mail; it might be the only cold-call I've ever made that got results. D.M. Thomas read my first draft of Portnoy's Daughter and suggested that I start over from scratch. I accepted his advice. Thereafter, he read each chapter as I wrote it, offering guidance and suggestions, but refraining from outright editing. We followed the same procedure on early drafts of The Swing of Beijing and, subsequently, he read a first draft of Waiting for Love Child. D.M. Thomas has been a brilliant mentor for me because he's able to offer genuinely constructive criticism. He can deliver bad news without hurting my feelings, and the guidance he offers is open-ended, thereby stimulating the development of my authorial judgment. I am extremely grateful to him for the time and care he's spent, reading and critiquing my work, and he and his wife, Angela, have become dear friends. What's the purpose of your blog? I blog primarily to deepen my reading experience in a context in which others can contribute (and hopefully benefit). I find that blogging about books intensifies my engagement with the book, prolongs my thought process about it and allows me to remember more about the book and my responses to it. I also blog occasionally about subjects tangential to books, like my life, but I usually try to link those posts to books in some way. I welcome and am delighted with reader comments and participation on my blog. Do you think that the Internet will render the book obsolete? The short answer is "no." I think the introduction of digital technologies necessitates a reorganization of people's means of acquiring information. Where folks used to spend a certain amount of time reading the newspaper or magazine articles, that time might be recharacterized in favor of e-mails encapsulating headlines, online news, blogs or chatting. But none of these online experiences is a substitute for the consumption experience of reading a book. The private enjoyment of becoming engrossed in a story and not wanting to put it down until you find out what happens is not duplicated by online reading. (The online and cell phone novels that have become popular particularly in Asia do not change my answer. I believe that these modes of entertainment are more properly competitive with digital diversions like chatting and video games than they are with books. E-readers, however, provide a digital reading experience competitive with books.) Also, in many parts of the world, computers are a scarcity, and books are hardly more plentiful. As JMG le Clézio said in his 2008 Nobel acceptance speech, "The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate. Its only flaw—and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular—is that in a great number of countries it is still very difficult to gain access to books. . . . And yet remedies to this situation do exist. Joint publication with the developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and bookmobiles, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages—which are often clearly in the majority—would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations."