Cosmopolitan literature

As my short stories piled up, a (self-evident) discovery was made: all of my stories are set in foreign locations.

Trying to get my head around why this is so, I arrived at quick conclusions about my identity - am I Chilean or British? I grew up in Chile, yet my surname is King; I have bright blond hair. Yet I don't align myself with British culture - I relish every time the English football team suffers defeat.

What usually happens with my fiction is that I take what I write very, very seriously. So I philosophise about my output. I try to develop a 'literary aesthetic' and make half-baked comments about my work.

One of these half-baked comments is what I call 'cosmopolitan literature'. I love setting my stories in different locations, different contexts and different time spans.

While a couple of my stories are quite faithful to history (when I read out my story 'Perpetual Death...' to a creative writing society, the people complimented me by saying that the story really actually felt like communist Russia), I don't methodically research the setting to make it seem accurate. Why?

If you're writing an historical novel, you obviously want to research. It has to be accurate. (Still, the chances that you will make mistakes is highly likely.) I see myself as a writer of fantasy. All that pretentious talk of 'writing about the unknown' has a grain of truth for me - I set my stories in far-away locations to immerse myself in the unknown. (Please bear in mind that I cringed as I wrote that.) Fantasy is in no need of historical accuracy and anything is admissible - even anachronisms.

Also, I am someone who loves to read world literature. This is even reflected by the degree I'm studying - comparative literature, the study of translated texts. I love looking at Russian literature, South American writing, oriental fiction - you name it.

When you read through, say, a Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky novel, you are left with a certain impression of the context. What is this impression? Without reading any history books, you get a slightly vague impression. Taking that vague impression I have of those times and places, I harness and explore them in my short stories.

I am a citizen of the world. I can't stand the hippie notion of "we're all together, let's take hands and sing happy songs." But I certainly love the idea of cosmopolitanism. In San Pedro de Atacama, the Chilean desert, as I walked, mixed in with the Spanish, were snatches of French, German, Portuguese, native indigenous languages. Lovely. I, for one, love the idea of a cosmopolitan Britain. Far from thinking that it will erase national identity, a mix of cultures will never do a country any harm.

One of the criteria academic critics love applying is what 'nationality' a writer is. Language is a key component that determines this. Joseph Conrad was a Pole, but he wrote in English. I write in English, but I would detest being labelled as such. Does my writing reflect English sensibilities, though? Maybe. But I deplore the idea of setting one of my stories in a realistic version of this dull little island.