Goodreads asked Luke McCallin:

How do you get inspired to write?

Luke McCallin I get a lot of inspiration from my work, and from my upbringing. I mentioned before the importance of observation in helping to become a writer. I see and hear a lot, and having spent time in the Caucasus, in the Balkans, and in the Sahel, I’ve seen so much human suffering, but also so much human dignity, that I feel compelled—inspired, if you like—to give voice to those impressions and feelings and observations. That’s not to say my writing’s about those places, although my first two books were set in WWII Sarajevo, but those experiences taught me a lot about how people can act in such situations. There is so much dignity, and so much anguish, in the human situation when confronted with war, or natural disaster. No one really asks to become a war criminal, or to get conscripted, or deny other humans their basic human rights, or to try and raise a family in a refugee camp, but it happens. And at the same time, as we see right now in Ukraine, it does not take much for people to move so far so fast from the paths their lives were taking, for postmen, for bakers, for bank clerks, for miners to become gunmen, to become warlords, for them to turn on their neighbours of decades and believe the worst of them, to expect the worse of them, and so to mete out the worst before it befalls them.

What does it take for a man to turn on his neighbour? What does it take for another man to stand up for another? Trying to understand the human motivations or conditions in all that, that’s what inspires me to write. That, and the sheer pleasure of creation and sharing.

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