Rabindranath Maharaj is the author of three previous novels: A Perfect Pledge, nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and for the Regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book; The Lagahoo's Apprentice, a Globe and Mail and Toronto Star Notable Book of the Year; and Homer in Flight, nominated for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

His new book, The Amazing Absorbing Boy is available now.

---

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence? A young boy reconstructs a strange new city from his memories of comic books.

2. How long did it take you to write this book? One year

3. Where is your favorite place to write? At a coffee shop in Ajax

4. How do you choose your characters' names? Instinctively. Or I use an arbitrary name until the right one emerges as I am writing.

5. How many drafts do you go through? Typically, two.

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be? One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Or maybe Don Quixote.

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it? Some wide -eyed seventeen-year-old boy. Maybe the actor from Slumdog Millionaire, though he's older.

8. What's your favourite city in the world? Anywhere with crumbling mansions and fat happy people selling local herbs.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask? Maybe Cervantes. Will the novel survive?

10. When do you write best, morning or night? Both. Late mornings and late nights.

11. Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript? My agent, Hilary McMahon.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read? Recently, comic books.

13. What's on your nightstand right now? Summertime by Coetzee, and, A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.

14. What is the first book you remember reading? Something by Enid Blyton.

15. Did you always want to be a writer? Yes

16. What do you drink or eat while you write? Coffee in the mornings, tea in the nights.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper? Depends on where I am, but mostly laptop.

18. What do you wear when you write? Freshly spun silken robes. However, I settle for anything that's loose and comfortable.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from? Depends on the type of story and the level of intimacy I would want to create between narrator and reader.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer? Peace and quiet.