The inspiration for the novel I’m currently working on, Oranges for Christmas, came from my first visit to Berlin in 1987. I was 19 and studying French and German at Oxford and I arranged to visit a friend in West Berlin over the summer. In those days there were two Germanies:  West Germany with its capital in Bonn, and East Germany with its capital in East Berlin, although the East Germans simply called their half of Berlin, “Berlin.”Continue Reading