It makes no bones about being a political novel. While earlier novels had political content and always included some kind of social comment, White Skin Man is a novel about racism Racism is the greatest question of our time, from the grand style apartheid in South Africa, Hitler and his Jewish question, and the civil rights movement in the United States of America, down to the millions of acts of petty prejudice that are enacted every day. Underlining this question is the simple formulation: "Can we not live together?"

There are some reviews on my website.

Of the eight novels that you have published so far, which was the most difficult to write? Which was easiest?

The Chinese Girl was the most difficult to write. It was originally conceived as an epistolary novel, but for various reasons that proved to be an impossible way of organizing the material satisfactorily. This meant re-conceiving a form for the novel when it was already half -completed. Difficult but interesting.

The easiest to write was the first one, Poet in the Gutter. This was so because I'd never written a novel before and had only the slightest inkling of the problems I would encounter. Also, because I was finally ready to write a novel after many false starts.

It was easy because I was able to set aside anything that got in the way. I was going to write a novel and nothing was going to stop me. I made myself blind to the parts that were not working. There are, in retrospect, many good things about the novel, but if I was to write it now it would be quite different.

What will your next book be about?

My next book, Winged with Death, will not be a crime novel. It is based mainly in Montevideo and its central theme is time. It is a book about revolution, about tango, and about the unfolding of an individual destiny. There is an extract from the opening chapter on my blog.

Winged with Death has engaged me in more ways than previous novels. It has made me dig deeper and in an artistic sense it is much more ambitious than anything else I have published.

How much time would you say you spend on writing?

I write every day. Sometimes I only spend a couple of hours at my desk. But I'm there, every morning and something like writing has to occur before I move on to something else. So I spend between 15 and 30 hours a week writing. An approaching deadline might squeeze more from me, but then again, it may not.

I'm driven to write. It is the way I respond to the world. I am aware of myself storing up experiences, thoughts and feelings. At some point I begin, almost unconsciously, to organize this material inside my head.

Later I begin making notes, creating a schemata, sometimes sentences and phrases, sometimes single words. And out of this jumble of ideas, a theme begins to emerge. Often more than one theme. All of this activity is not writing, it is a kind of pre-writing, a chewing over of everything that I've collected, a way of beginning to translate it into words.