India, Nov. 7 -- How did the idea of the story of Flashlight germinate?

This story comes from a couple of different points of origin. Many different preoccupations of mine came together, and that was a process that took quite a long time. I wasn't thinking of writing a book so much as I had a number of different interests that, at some point, coalesced and became an idea.

The first is really a childhood trip to Japan in the late 1970s with my parents, which made a great impact on me personally because it was such a culturally different experience for me. But none of the events of this book, of course, took place on that trip. That trip was, in the larger scheme of things, unremarkable. My father was a visiting professor, we went home ag...