Was considered by many to be a front-runner for the 2005 Nobel Prize in
Literature, along with Margaret Atwood and poet Adonis. The prize ultimately
went to playwright Harold Pinter.
[on having children] No, I don't think so, but then I was never strongly maternal. My brother also doesn't have children, it could be genetic, but it could be that I was so very interested in writing that I just didn't have time, although I do like children. My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës.
