I grew up in Chicago and in Michigan, both places which have influenced my work -- Stillriver, my first novel for Random House, is set in a small Michigan town, not unlike the one where I spent summers working; Without Prejudice, my most recent book, is set largely in Hyde Park, the neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago, where I grew up -- and where Barack Obama lives now (my great aunt grew up in his house!). It explores the relationship between two men, one black and one white, who knew each other as children. They meet up again after a period of thirty years -- during most of which the black man, Duval Morgan, has been in prison for a crime he swears he didn't commit. I hope my story says something about the fraught, tension-filled history of relationships between black and white Americans and explains why so many people are so thrilled that Obama won this year's Presidential election -- exploding the myth that a black man could never be elected President.
Curiously, perhaps, I have spent virtually my entire adult life in England, where I worked for many years in publishing, including seven years at Oxford University Press and four years at Penguin Books. I'd argue that this distance gives a perspective to my work about the States that I otherwise would not have. And I know that the longer I have stayed away from America, the more inclined I've been to write about it.
My next novel also is set there -- though this time in the 1930s, during the anxious years before World War II. It's a story that may help explain something British people have often puzzled about -- which is why it took the United States so long to enter the War. The simplest answer is that America is far more German than foreigners realise -- it was the single largest 'ethnic' group then, and many in its community were reluctant to take up arms against their former homeland. Some even actively conspired to keep America out of the War and to help Hitler, and it's one of those conspiracies that my new book explores.