India, April 11 -- Folklore is woven into the very fabric of your prose. Did that happen organically or was oral storytelling something from your childhood that shaped your journey as an author?

I would say the latter. I grew up in Nigeria for the first eight years of my life, soaking up oral storytelling: these fantastical, strange stories about different characters with multiple intentions in the story. But depending on who told you the story, the ending or the middle might change. So, they were kind of shapeshifting stories in a way and I think I imbibed that as a child. These incredible stories about characters in Africa, folktales, fables, all of that rich imaginative scope was something that I was able to have access to really youn...