India, July 11 -- What sort of research went into writing Remote Sympathy?

Remote Sympathy had its seeds last century when I was studying German in Berlin and lived there for three years in the early to mid-1990s. While I was there, our university professor took a group of foreign students on a trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, which is in the heart of Germany. It overlooks - and is part of - the beautiful town of Weimar, which is seen as the cradle of German culture and was the birthplace of the [short-lived] German democracy between the two world wars.

We stayed in the former SS barracks. The thing that stuck with me from that visit was the geography of the place. [I realised] that the citizens of Weimar, who form a chorus in the...