Morag Fraser

It would probably be me because, after all, I live in Iowa.

I'm in my 70s.

I'm a Calvinist.

So it's wonderful, isn't it?

She's also extremely dry and very, very funny in novels that are tragic in many ways, but just dry and sharp and witty.

So I think she's wonderful.

And also, if you want to learn about America, particularly at the moment,

I mean, I thought I knew some things and do know some things, but I learnt so much more about racial discrimination, about abolition, about American religion, about all that.

So she's across the board.

She's an absolute education.

That's right.

Well, he will have learned a lot about complexity, moral complexity, about families.

I mean, his own family is complex, as you know, mixed race.

It's not the principal sort of screaming out loud subject of her novels, mixed race, American history of racism, but it's just there like this is serious all the time.

And I think he would have learned quite a lot about that.

Which became... 28 years between that or 24 years between that and Gilead.

It's like a can of film spooling around and you get different bits of it.

It's as though someone's mixed up the cans and you get a different aspect of both characters and place in each novel.

And it's not as if each novel then contradicts the one that's gone before.

It just adds two.