[laughter] and i was wondering if that rings true to you, and you mentioned dave eggers and dave foster wallace, and if so, who do you steal from? >> oh, i don't mean that -- >> i don't mean actually steal. [laughter] >> no. so there's a section in the book that is set entirely as a magazine interview where a woman who, after an afghan woman a poet, and she's probably my favorite character in the whole novel -- >> mine too, yeah. >> is she really? >> she really is, because she's -- maybe i should just introduce her for a second. >> her name is nila -- >> she's very surprising to people who have a conception of afghan women and how repressed they've been -- >> yeah. >> -- legally and politically and physically because she is such a modern woman. >> she's antithetical to everything that -- >> every stereotype. >> -- all the stereotypes of afghan women. we meet her in the '50s and again in the '70s when she's in her 40s. but she's a poet. she's a fiercely sexual creature. she's very brazen, very outspoken, extremely intelligence, insightful, a raging narcissist -- [laughter] and budding al