'Ordinary life is shapeless'

‘If you write only the true things people get bored... ordinary life is shapeless... When I write, I'm here to use everything I can to make this a good book. It's not me expressing my inner soul. It is me using everything that I have, so I can tell this story and to some extent I have to be aware that my own emotions, my own love of these people, can be harmful to the book.'

Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life, which has just won the Folio Prize, in The Times