Liam Pieper: The five places that made me

PRAGUE

I wrote my new historical novel The Toymaker in Prague. What a city to write about history in, to experience it. I saw, for example, a palimpsest. Do you know what that is? Thrifty medieval scholars would erase the writing on old parchment and write over it. Over time, the original writing would start to shine through, and when you examined these documents in a certain light, you could read what once was. Over time the word has been adopted by architecture, literature, archaeology – to describe the way each generation builds on the wonders of the last. A city could, for example, be a palimpsest, a city – for example, like Prague.

INDIA

Barely 20 the first time I visited India, I was culture-shocked into catatonia. I was scammed, cheated, robbed, scammed again, poisoned, sickened, blackmailed, arrested, and arrested and blackmailed. Until India, I'd thought I'd been able to handle anything, and it handed me my arse on a thali dish.

Years later, I went back for a writers' residency and I had a revelation. I wasn't the only one undone by the sheer majestic chaos of the most plurastic of nations. There's a billion Indians who don't understand it either. If you take an Indian from, say, Kerala, and drop him in, say, Rajasthan, they will be just as baffled and discombobulated as I was. Once I understood that, I fell in love with the chaos, and with the country's great existential way of shrugging.

HYDRA

When I signed my book deal I got an advance. Not enough to live on for long in Australia, but enough to survive for a while in Greece. So, I did the most bourgeoisie thing I could think of, and rented a room on the island in the Aegean where Leonard Cohen wrote his books. I didn't write much, but I advise you all to try it.

JAPAN

I went to Japan to escape from a tiny little gangster problem I had at the time. This was the first time I'd really understood the concept of civil virtue, of living in a city where you worked hard to make things easier on other people. I stopped being an outlaw not because of the auspices of Australian law, but of the Japanese transport system. A country that can make Tokyo run on time can teach a person something.