Katy Guest talks with Helon Habila whose fiction “has taken him from Nigeria to Norwich and Washington.”

“Books and writing have been the core of Helon Habila's life, whether in Nigeria, Norwich or Washington. ‘I always lived in my imagination,’ he says, recalling his childhood in a small town in northern Nigeria. ‘I remember staying in my room all day just reading and dreaming and making up things. Living in a small town, you begin to create other places to escape.’ He had written two novels by the time he was 17 - now forgotten in a drawer - but had never been abroad and never dreamed that he would ever be published. That wasn't something that happened in Nigeria, especially to writers who dared to write about the politics of their troubled homeland.” – from “Helon Habila: In Search of Africa’s Angels, by Katy Guest, The Independent