India, June 13 -- How did you conceive the idea of writing Caledonian Road? Also, tell us about its wide cast of characters.

I had been thinking about this book for a long time. I lived in Kings Cross in the 1990s when I was in my twenties and I was always overwhelmed by London as a place: a multiplicity of human beings from all over the world, their varied economic statuses, life experiences, and this multifarious, multicultural road, Caledonian Road stretching up through North London, that really interested me. I realised if I could tell the story of the people who lived around that road, then I'd have a new kind of novel about London. And that it would have a relationship with the Dickensian novel, the Victorian novel. So, it's a big ...