• LEHER KALA: You co-authored many books. How tough is it for the writers?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: You have to find the right person you want to write with. The thing is that you mustn't have ego. You mustn't think that what you write is better than what the other writes. And when you have found this kind of character, you decide about the subject. Now you have a number of requirements for a subject. It has to be contemporary. Our strength is to interview. I'm not going to write a book about Akbar, because nobody is around from Akbar's time. But I'm going to write a book about people who are still alive, because my technique as a journalist enables me to get more information, so it has to be contemporary. It has to universal, because we don't write for the French, we don't write for Indians, we don't write for Mexicans, we write for the world. So it has to be a subject that will interest the world.

The third thing, and perhaps the most important, it has to take place in a place that we love. If you ask me to write a book on Eskimos, I hate the cold, I'll never write on the Eskimos even if you give me ten million dollars because I don't like being cold. So it has to be a place you like, because ours is always a long project. There is no secret. It only comes out after long, exhausting research that can take one year, two years, four years, whatever. But it has to be research from which ultimately you can write up to ten books.

... contd.