Goodreads asked Ijen Kim:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ijen Kim The very first inkling of an idea came while I was walking down a slushy, grey lane in Moscow and the sun came shining down on a barbed wire fence, like a scattering of diamonds. And I thought of the power of the human imagination and human ability to see beauty and hope in even the seemingly bleakest places. The fact that I am myself also an artist and had long been thinking about authoritarian regimes, and living in one, then set me on the track that led to this book

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