I had no intention of writing a novel when I signed up for a creative writing course in London but the seed was sown when I wrote a short story inspired by a travel assignment in Mauritius for Marie Claire magazine. Still, the idea of cultivating a full-blown 300-page piece of fiction seemed a daunting prospect – Jack’s beanstalk compared to the shrub-like 1,500-word magazine features I’d written to date – and the story was shelved for a while. But…..

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