The obvious question for Tash Aw is about the challenge of returning to the writerly life after winning the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best debut novel in 2005.
The former Hong Kong resident's answer is more surprising than the question deserves.
The pressure of writing a second novel has nothing to do with matching the debut's sales and prizes or finding a fresh well of fiction ideas, Aw says. The greatest problem is creating enough time to write.
The success of the debut, The Harmony Silk Factory, established Aw on the literary cocktail circuit. He accepted every festival invitation and undertook a publicity tour of four continents.
'After years of just sitting in my room scribbling away, suddenly people said: Do you want to come to Rome or Stockholm? Of course I said yes. It seemed an extraordinary privilege to be paid to travel somewhere to talk about my work,' Aw says.
His solitary life of literature and his creative writing studies at Britain's University of East Anglia had not prepared Aw for the duties of the modern published author. Standing in front of audiences triggered tension that could only be burned off by seeking out writers and publishing types to socialise with afterwards. He spent six months talking to thousands of people about literature when he should have been creating some more.