India, April 25 -- 1Your novel is a portrait of the Punjab province in Pakistan. Was it meant to be a novel about complicated masculinities? I was very conscious that I was going to be writing about power, and about power and status. In Pakistan, power is mostly exercised by men or by women through men. It's the same in India, I suspect. There are, of course, women who are powerful, like, say, Benazir Bhutto, sort of an "honorary man". And she was there in place of her father, in a certain sense. I guess I was conscious that I was going to be writing about male power and that therefore I'd be writing about masculinity. For me, these are much more a bunch of individuals who are shaped by a very sexist culture. 2The novel comes together as interconnected stories. Who and what did you start with? It was two characters: Rustam, who is more or less based on myself, and Bayazid, who's based on a man who still works for me. He started working for my dad in 1973, I think. I had always known I would write about him. He's just a walking short story. He's a wonderful character and I know a great deal about him because he's a very, very, deep, intimate friend of mine as well as my employee. We've had lots of adventures together. In the Rustam story, there's a section in which they're sitting at the police thana, and the deputy superintendent of police goes and pees in a corner. That's a true story. I own a farm in South Punjab... and that exact thing happened. This was in 1987-88. He looked at me, he knew who I was, but he was trying to insult me. So, he did that. He went and peed in the corner. I thought it was so funny. I have lots of little pieces of things that I've written that I keep in various files so that I can use them in stories later. So, you could say that these characters have been floating around in my head for a while, and then I just pulled these guys out and started moving them around. 3The novel opens a few years after Partition and maps six decades of Pakistani life. Tell us about your relationship with Pakistan. I'm sure Indians have the same thing. It's a mad relationship we have with this country. It's my country, I love it. It's where I was born and bred and where my family history is. I've spent most of my life in Pakistan. And yet, it's a very frustrating place, but then every place is frustrating. I mean, if you were an American right now, you'd be beating yourself in the head. So, it's not like it's easy being from any place. It's easier being from Norway. My kids are in school here, and therefore I see Norway very intimately through them. It's a much better-run place than most, but there are many ways in which it's very challenging to live here. Pakistan is like a very powerful drug. I find that once you've taken it, everything else seems bland. When I'm in Pakistan, I'm mostly out in the countryside, where life is even more dramatic. So, when I come abroad, I find life here very pale and without much interest. It's like it doesn't have enough salt in it. I love Pakistan and yet I'm also frustrated by it....