I Grew Up In Cyprus And Egypt,

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.

You Never Know What's Going To Happen In Your Life, And You Never Know What's Going To Happen In Someone Else's Life Either.

When I Hit A Block, Regardless Of What I Am Writing, What The Subject Matter Is, Or What's Going On In The Plot, I Go Back And I Read Pablo Neruda's Poetry. I Don't Actually Speak Spanish, So I Read It Translation. But I Always Go Back To Neruda. I Don't Know Why, But It Calms Me, Calms My Brain.

I Grew Up In Cyprus And Egypt, These Fantastic Places I Remember Fondly.

Everything Necessary To Understand My Grandfather Lies Between Two Stories: The Story Of The Tiger’s Wife, And The Story Of The Deathless Man. These Stories Run Like Secret Rivers Through All The Other Stories Of His Life – Of My Grandfather’s Days In The Army; His Great Love For My Grandmother; The Years He Spent As A Surgeon And A Tyrant Of The University. One, Which I Learned After His Death, Is The Story Of How My Grandfather Became A Man; The Other, Which He Told To Me, Is Of How He Became A Child Again.