India, Nov. 8 -- 1How did the idea for the story of Flashlight come to you? This story comes from a couple of different points of origin. The first is a childhood trip to Japan in the late 1970s, with my parents, which had a great impact on me because it was such a culturally different experience. The landscape and those memories stayed with me. Two decades later, I read in The New York Times about the case of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese schoolgirl who disappeared from her hometown less than a year before the visit my parents and I had made. Even more years later, I began reading about the Zainichi community in Japan, which is a community of ethnic Koreans who, for various reasons, were living in Japan at the end of World War 2. When Japan's empire ended, they lost their legal status. I was interested in these things. I started writing about these characters from different angles, and by late 2020, I had carved out enough material for it to stand alone as a story published in The New Yorker. Even then, I already wanted to write more. I couldn't yet figure out how the book would work, but I knew these characters came from a larger story. 2How complicated was it to explore the child Louisa's psyche? I found it very easy to imagine my way into this child. Not because she resembles me. But I think there is a way in which she is maybe like a bit of a wish fulfilment for me. We've all been children. I've also been a parent of children her age. So I think the experience of being a child still feels very familiar or present to me. One of the things that I really enjoyed about Louisa is I think she behaves in ways that I wish I had behaved. I was a very well-behaved child. But as a well-behaved child, I think I did sort of often wish that I could be a bad child, throw a tantrum, be disagreeable, not speak when spoken to, not cooperate with adults. So, I wasn't Louisa, but I was really rooting for her. And it didn't feel difficult to imagine a child who, because her life has been turned upside-down, just isn't really complying anymore. 3How much of Lousia is you? I think Louisa does represent a little bit of a path not taken for me. I can imagine being a very wayward child, but I wasn't. My own mother read the book and she was surprised by Louisa. She said, well, you weren't obnoxious like that. Louisa maybe represents my childhood fantasy of the kind of child I wished I could be. 4Are you working on a new project now? I've been trying to write about my father's family. I've written about my father in disguise so many times that it almost seems like I should really write a book about him. I've been interested in this story of my father's family for most of my life. I cannot figure out how to write well about it. But I've been trying for the past two books. I've been trying to write this book, and instead I've written these other books. So, I don't know if this will be the next book or if I'll ever make a book out of it....