SOURCE: Ghose, Zulfikar, and Chelva Kanaganayakam. “Zulfikar Ghose: An Interview.” Twentieth Century Literature 32, no. 2 (summer 1986): 169-86.

In the following interview conducted on August 14, 1984, Ghose describes the reasons for writing each of his novels, discusses authors and works that have influenced his writing, explains the evolution of his style, and critiques his poetic endeavors.

Despite two decades of sustained literary activity, Zulfikar Ghose continues to remain relatively unknown in academic circles, hardly discussed in literary journals, and only tenuously linked to Commonwealth, British, and American writing. His refusal to be circumscribed by national boundaries and “ethnic flavor,” his willingness to experiment with new modes, and his propensity to create antireferential and “difficult” works may partly explain his consignment to that area of gray where neither the student nor the literary critic wishes to wander. Neither mediocre nor an obscurantist, Ghose has at least three major claims to recognition: firstly...