India, April 25 -- Your novel This Is Where The Serpent Lives can be read in so many different ways. It's a portrait of the Punjab province in Pakistan. Some readers might look at it as stories of inequalities and social mobility. I read it as a novel about masculinities. All the men in it start off as lone pups and their lives are defined, even transformed, by the compassion and camaraderie they find in each other. Was this 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. I guess I haven't thought of - I mean, in Pakistan, power is mostly exercised by men or is exercised by women through men. It's the same in India, I suspect. There are, of ...