What is your favourite music?

I listen overwhelmingly to classical music (indeed am writing this to the background strains of Radio Mozart). I love bel canto opera, the symphonies of Beethoven, and Mahler. For an atheist, I have a strange fondness for many of the great Masses.

Which human quality do you most admire?

After Anthony’s death I realised that empathy is greatly underestimated. I have found it from unexpected people – and been shocked by its lack in people I once thought were friends.

What is your favourite book?

I’m cheating here by naming two plays: The Importance of Being Earnest and Angels in America. Ask me next year and the answer would probably be quite different.

Who is your favourite author?

Again, impossible to answer. For now I’ll mention China Miéville, Margaret Atwood, and Sumner Locke Elliott.

And your favourite literary hero and heroine?

That’s easier: Myra Breckinridge (who invented queer theory, though the theorists don’t know it), and Miss Marple.

How old were you when your first book appeared?

Twenty-eight; but I prefer to say seven.

What, if anything, impedes your writing?

Uncertainty that I have something to say that others will want to read. A good bookshop is a scary prospect for someone who thinks of adding to the ever-growing stock of what’s out there.

How do you regard publishers?

No author ever thinks that his publisher pays him enough attention. I want to give credit to the University of Queensland Press, who have produced my new book, and have been exemplary. I know how lucky I am to have had good editing, a real luxury nowadays.

What do you think of the state of criticism?

My worst experience came when British reviewers reviewed my book Global Sex. Several of them chose to attack not me, but people whose work I’d quoted. We need to get over the cultural cringe that assumes our reviewing is inferior to that in the Atlantic world, but our literary editors need to be more careful in checking for the personal likes and dislikes that are inevitable in a small country.

If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?

I’ve never lived off my writing; one of the few consolations of ageing is that I am of the generation that allowed academics to write broadly and on many topics. If I were now twenty-five, I would have to think very hard about whether one could work in a university and be a writer in any meaningful sense.

What do you think of writers’ festivals?

I’m a gregarious show-off, so of course I love them. And I particularly like hanging out in the green room and meeting other writers.

Do you feel artists are valued in our society?

We worry far too much about this in Australia; maybe the cultural cringe again.

What are you working on now?

Trying to be brave enough to write another novel.