I am writing in order to explore the human condition. When people call me a Vietnam novelist that's because I am writing about. I always say that I am a Vietnam novelist the way that Monet was a lily pad painter. Vietnam for me is just a metaphor. Characters and settings and situations that I use to explore what I am really concerned about which is comrade, kinship and human connection and cultural dislocation, aspiration and the search for self and identity.
Compost heap refers to the mix of everything that is forgotten.