I wanted to introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience.

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

Emperors, kings, artisians, peasens, big people---at the bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which.

North American leftists just keep trying to relive the '60s, or to make the '60s happen again.

I love contemporary North American fiction and short fiction. My favorite writer is Jonathan Franzen, and my favorite writers of short fiction are George Saunders and Alice Munro.

I'm not sure the Russians would be happy that their iconic wooly mammoth has North American origins.