My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm very comfortable with where history will judge me.
I know more than anyone the divergent views about my father. I want to be judged on my own merits.
People have said I'm a puppet, an instrument of my grandfather, but I think they quickly realised that I'm my own person, that I have autonomy in my actions. I think they rapidly realised I could look after myself.
Eventually, I'm going to be judged purely on my own merits.
My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.
I do not wish to hide my origins, nor do I seek to make it a subject of conversation. I am what I am.
OUR history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.
History releases me from my own experience and jogs my fictional imagination.
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.
And I hereby distinctly and emphatically declare that I consider myself, and earnestly desire to be considered by others, as utterly divested, now and during the rest of my life, of any such rights, the barbarous relics of a feudal, despotic system.