You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Michael Ondaja, and in this brief 15-minute interview, we are going to talk about that

impossible to talk about subject, passion. Andesha seems to me to be the inventor of a certain, among other things, of a certain

kind of scene of passion.

The first time I saw it was in the skin of the lion.

And the characters are speaking indented.

Their lovemaking and passion and brutality seems to be going on in a constant

underneath their dialogue, almost. And there's a quality, too, in the movie of the English

patient that begins with Catherine's slap

and you say about him

that he loves it when he slaps her

in the book

and I'm wondering about

the originality, I guess,

the off-centered quality, the passion in your books takes the reader by surprise

and suddenly comes out of darkness in a flare.

And I wondered how it's written.

Well, there's no premeditated element to the writing of those scenes.

...