Around us, we do see attempts to delegitimize Israel, a sort of secret, hidden anti-Semitism growing in many countries, often on the right but also on the left.

Real stories - whether in pure fiction or historical - have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present.

Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.

When I'm up, I'm over-exuberant; when I'm down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space.

My focus has to be on my career.

If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.

Now in India, a village boy who has worked his way up to work at a call center, or if he gets a job working even as a busboy in a Taj or an Oberoi hotel, he'll put on his wedding announcement with pride, 'Busboy at the Taj' or 'Call center, Office Tiger.'

I volunteered at Ayuda, in the office, on a regular basis, and I did everything from fingerprinting and interviewing persons of Hispanic origin who entered the country without inspection and who were seeking work-authorization permits.