Leila Slimani

I had a nanny growing up in Morocco, and my parents encouraged me to put myself in her shoes sometimes.

I like anti-hero women. Negative female characters interest me.

When you become a 'public person,' I find it very difficult to keep following social media. It is too harsh, too violent. I only read newspapers online.

I think maternal instinct is a male construct that has been used for centuries to keep women in their place, at home.

Lullaby' is about boundaries.

For me, it is freedom, freedom from everything: when I write, I'm not a woman. I'm not a Muslim. I'm not a Moroccan. I can reinvent myself, and I can reinvent the world.

My parents were lovers of books, and they raised us in a manner that viewed freedom and subversion as indispensable.

I don't really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult.

People don't want to treat their nannies subserviently. They don't want to act like bosses. And so nobody quite knows how to behave, and everyone is slightly pretending that the mother and nanny are 'equal' - when that's not the case. And pretending you are equal can make things complicated, even dangerous.

I like to describe my characters as though they were all trapped in a glass box.

I am not afraid of being a pariah.

One of the big mistakes of the Moroccan elite and the elite in the Muslim world was to be afraid of the conservatives. They are fighting for their ideas. Why shouldn't we fight for our ideas?