He sent me a silk scarf every year. I got the impression that these were literal gifts. He wanted to bind me to him, in case I escaped.

When I met him he was writing, using his own unique method of composition: each time he finished a chapter he would close the book, turn it upside down and continue again from the opposite side.

"That way the characters must come to terms with the fact that their differences are physical as well as textual," he said.