India, April 1 -- Your new novel, Maryam & Son, is about a woman in her mid-40s who is grappling with the disappearance of her son who is suspected of joining ISIS. But it's not about radicalization or ISIS or war. It's a portrait of this woman as a mother, as a widow, as a sister and, later as a lover. Tell me about the kernel of this novel.

I didn't want to do a radicalization story or how people go on that dangerous, terrible path, not because it was an ideological, political choice but because it was about Maryam from the very start. It was always about this woman.

There was a time in 2015, 14, 16, when a lot of people from the West went on that path. They would be found in places like camps in Syria or Iraq or on the way... There w...