“I think the experience of living in another country helped me become a writer for a number of reasons. The sense of cultural dislocation I felt helped. I stopped watching TV in Japan because it made no sense to me — a habit that has stayed with me today — and I would go and sit in coffee shops and write, and be able tune out what people were saying around me because it was all in another language. I carried that sense of isolation around with me a lot in Japan — I think the more you can block out the real world, the more vividly imagined the fictional worlds you create.”

[Jake Purbright interviews "Sayonara Bar" author Susan Barker here.

The daughter of a Chinese-Malay mother and an English father, Barker grew up in East London. She spent two years working in Japan following graduation from university. ]