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I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

I think we have become oversaturated with tired fictional narratives.

Fiction is no longer the dominant storytelling device of our time. In the 19th century it worked great, and fiction was the king, but it's not the king any more.

I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction. There's always a temptation, I think, among some historical writers to shade things toward the modern point of view. You know, they won't show someone doing something that would have been perfectly normal for the time but that is considered reprehensible today.

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.