There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.

I think that to a very great extent we are partners with the divine in this enterprise called history. That is an ongoing relationship, and there is absolutely no guarantee that things will automatically work out to our best advantage.

Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.

Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world - Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.