So, sort of going back to the earlier question - did you set out to make a socio-political statement, to challenge some of these issues in writing the book? And have you braced yourself for the backlash that is likely to come if and when you publish in Nigeria?

No, I didn't set out to do anything but follow the story to its end. I didn't even want to expose any issues. I just had to. As for potential backlashes, I am argumentative. At the same time, I have a tendency to shy away from angry conflicts and I cannot bear malice, but I have a strong will. Whatever the reaction, I will move on to my next story. Writers don't set out to create perfect works, or works that please everyone. Alice Walker said, Be nobody's darling and I agree with her. So far, I've had positive reviews from men and women. A couple of writers I respect have commented on how I translated Yoruba expressions to English. I understand their irritation, but for me, I could either translate or use a glossary.

Reading your book, in the evocation of waterfront Lagos, I sensed echoes of the Deep South of the United States, in your description of the tang and marshy smells of the lagoon front. You of course, reside in Mississippi. Are there parallels or have I just imagined them?

I live in a regular suburban subdivision. There are no marshes around me and Meridian is a landlocked city as mall-erized as most of America. Most days I'm too busy shuttling my daughter to school and after-school activities to notice the views. I'm aware of the red soil and creeks with names like Sowashee and Hobolochitto, but then sometimes I imagine the horrors that Native Americans and Africans went through and then the landscape can appear sinister. Last year, I met an artist who asked if I knew the real Mississippi. I had to confess I knew it only from the highway, driving to New Orleans or to Atlanta. She offered to take me to Oxford and other places of character, the back roads and all. I was tempted because Mississippi has such a rich literary history, but then I became afraid. She was an elderly white woman and I thought, what if we end up in the wrong place and I get shot for trespassing? People in Mississippi use guns. The Pearl High school and Lockheed Martin plant shootings took place here, and I'm not just talking about headline stories like that. I've heard enough personal stories of fatal shootings in the community where I live. In Lagos, only the police, the military, or armed robbers mess with guns to that extent. But, like Lagos, Mississippi is much more than its negative headline stories.

Which brings me to my next question - Enitan, your heroine is sent to the UK to boarding school and then university and there she encounters the experience of being an outsider, of being different - of having to explain why she washed her hair only to grease it up again immediately after- does this and indeed the whole book draw from your experience? In other words how much of you is in Enitan? And is there a real-life Sheri?

Every Nigerian knows a Sheri. Ostensibly, she possesses power because of her beauty, "bottom power", as we call it at home, but the reality is that she is an objectified woman, "a piece of ass", and she suffers the worst consequence for this: rape. Enitan has intellectual power, which she often doesn't exercise. Although I did not intend it, the prison scene is in a sense a metaphor for the state of her mind. I can relate to that, because in my own life I don't always express my views verbally. In public, I can become tongue-tied or I clam up. I did go to a boarding school in Nigeria when I was 10. Queen's College. I loved it. I was the class playwright. Then from age 14 to 18, I was in a boarding school in Somerset, England. Millfield School. That was a major culture shock. Then I attended Birmingham University. After I graduated, I lived in Nigeria for a couple of years. I returned to England in 1988 and I've lived overseas ever since. I moved to the United States in 1994 so I've spent about a third of my life in Nigeria, a third in England and a third in America. Someday, I intend to write a novel based outside Nigeria. I've been in the most unlikely places, especially after I married a Nigerian doctor. We moved from Wigan in England, to Hackensack in New Jersey to Meridian in Mississippi. It's like being in a seriously under-funded diplomatic service without the immunity. But no, Enitan is not me. She is more vocal, more daring. Also, her family history couldn't be more different from mine. My father was the son of a traditional ruler. He worked for the government and he died when I was eight, just after the Biafran war. My mother raised five children on her own. In her spare time, she played golf. She was stylish and fabulous and took us travelling. But I would also say she is a proud Yoruba woman who in some ways believes in "traditionalism", even though she might disagree. For her, women must fulfill their duties as wives and mothers, no excuses. For me, this was a source of conflict. It still is. My in-laws are not like Enitan's in-laws though. My husband is a Ransome-Kuti and they have a strong tradition of activism in their family. From their grandmother, to Fela, to Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, they have fought against oppression.

Your main character is a woman and there is a strong sense of the woman's perspective running through the book, particularly in terms of challenging some of the chauvinistic aspects of contemporary Nigerian society and at the same time celebrating the strength of women like Alhaja, who without formal education, runs her family and business with an iron grip, successfully. Indeed in many ways I was reminded of the work of Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa. Do you see yourself as a sort of 21st century heiress to these Nigerian women writers?

In so far as men and women write from their experiences, I'd say there is such a thing as a woman's perspective in a story. And yes, I have a woman narrator in this novel, but when people hear those words "a woman's perspective", they expect a domestic story. Clearly, family politics is not to be sniffed at. During the Abacha regime, women were more wary of their in-laws coming over than they were about state security agents bursting into their homes. I'm not trying to trivialize the politics of the State, but what sets our heartbeat racing on a daily basis, who stops us from speaking our minds? Not the State. The small communities we exist in, our families, our friends and the repercussions of not fitting in. I tell this story in my novel, but I also write about a dictatorship and Lagos society, not just domesticity. To answer your question though, Flora Nwapa published the first novel by a Nigerian woman in the year I was born, I think. She is an icon. Buchi Emecheta is still writing today. She is the most renowned Nigeria woman writer internationally. Her work is current and relevant so she can't have any heirs just yet. I'm writing from the perspective of their daughters. I know that this perspective has rarely been seen in literature. I definitely don't see myself as a 21st century anything. I can't imagine being that egotistical.

In your response, I sense echoes of the feminist aphorism "the personal is political"... There is a long history of debates (which is still ongoing) about feminism and what it means in a Nigerian context. There was a recent article in the Nigerian media that argued that Nigerian women even when they lived the feminist philosophy tended to shy away from the tag "feminist" because of the negative connotations of the word. Would you regard yourself as a feminist?

Not the negative connotations, the negative reactions, and if these women are anything like me, they simply don't have the time to get into arguments over the word. Seriously though, I don't regard myself as any sort of feminist. It would limit my imagination in some way. But if people are interested in finding out what I think about feminism, I invite them to read my works.

As a Nigerian Igbo, born after the Civil War I am often struck by how little Nigerians of my generation who are not Igbo know about Biafra and the circumstances surrounding it. Enitan, who is not Igbo, talks about this in your book. What made you put that in? Did you research the war? Because I know it certainly isn't taught in our schools as Chimamanda Adichie has pointed out elsewhere.

Yes, Enitan was ignorant about the Biafran war and she was questioning herself in that passage. I'm afraid I'm one of the Nigerians you're talking about. My knowledge of the war was based mostly on anecdotes until I started reading books like On a Darkling Plain and Blood on the Niger. I was born three years before the war started. Apart from the propaganda announcements on television and the occasional bomb raid alerts, I wasn't aware of the devastation until I found the Frederick Forsyth book with those terrible photographs in my parents' library. I must have been about six or seven. I remember asking my mother about the war and I sensed her sadness, so I backed off. I didn't even know that my aunt, also called Sefi Atta, lost her husband Christopher Okigbo during that war. As you know, he was a poet and he was killed fighting for Biafra. It is shameful what happened. I think that people of my parents' generation are more silent about the war. It was a trauma even for those who were far from the battlefront. They still experienced a trauma of conscience. Granted, public discussions about the war are more like bitter brawls, and I can't imagine how we will teach anything we still can't talk about rationally. But it's not just Biafra. Think about the atrocities that are happening in Nigeria now, in peaceful times: the mess in the Delta region with the oil companies and Sharia law in the north of the country. Before the international furore over Ken Saro-Wiwa and Amina Lawal, how many Nigerians knew or cared about what was happening in those regions except journalists and organizations like Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People and Baobab for Women's Human Rights? The premise of my novel is that Nigerians for the most part were silent during the Abacha regime. The people who actually spoke out were so few and they were not people like me who are safely writing novels today.