More than any of my other novels, House on Fire has its roots in a real story. In 1990 I was teaching at a university in Beijing. In an anthology of Chinese fiction published by a state house I fell upon a strange, wonderful story by a young Tibetan writer. It seemed a marvel of imagination and daring, especially given that the author, whose name was Tashi Dawa, apparently lived right in Lhasa. I'd always wanted to visit Tibet, and decided to combine a trip there with a bit of literary sleuthing. I wanted to meet Tashi Dawa. I wanted to talk to him about his work.

I did visit Lhasa, and I did, with the help of another westerner in the Tibetan capital, track down the writer. It took three days, but the pay off, an hour in a room with an affable man with a goatee beard and a mischievous grin, was a thrill, even if our conversation had to be in Mandarin, a language I spoke poorly. I asked his permission to write about him. I knew it would make a great magazine piece.

But then, on my way out of Lhasa my hosts, the official state tourism agency, informed me that my flight had been cancelled and that I had to re-locate to a special hotel. For three days I waited in an unmarked dormitory, one that appeared to be run by, and largely for, the Chinese army. I was never charged for the room or for my meals. I was never told why I was being held in the city past the expiry of my travel visa.

I suspected the delay had to do with the fact that I had met a local artist. I worried that I had landed Tashi Dawa in trouble. Eventually I was issued the ticket, and later on I made sure, using contacts in Beijing, that no harm had come to anyone I'd encountered in Lhasa. In 1991 I published a travel piece in Saturday Night magazine about China and Tibet and a rakish writer whose pen name also happened to be a local greeting.

What I didn't write about in Saturday Night was the 'post' story of my being detained in Lhasa. I didn't write about the ethical issues that should surround any kind of 'incursion,' however well intended, by someone from a stable, 'free' country into a place where life is much more fraught and dangerous. Suppose harm had come to Tashi Dawa? Suppose my passing interest in interviewing a Tibetan artist had had, in the end, serious repercussions?

House on Fire emerged from this. I imagine a man, a Canadian businessman living in Hong Kong, who reads a short-story in an anthology and decides, more or less on a whim, to go find the writer, and to interview him. I imagine him doing so, and then being detained, and then learning that he has in fact been followed the entire time by the secret police and has in fact placed lives in peril. I imagine him deciding that he can, with the help of a fellow westerner he has befriended, undo what he has done; go talk with those people again, warn them, and that he then can with good conscience board the airplane and return to his family.

Only he can't seem to make things right. Worse, his every effort to undo his mistake winds up compounding the error, deepening the tragedy, furthering the mystery. He grows desperate to see his wife again. He longs to hold his kids in his arms, smell the talcum scent of their skin, the rose water of their hair. Meanwhile, people are disappearing around him. Kids are being beaten up; bombs are going off. A house even, one of the finest traditional homes in the city, has been set on fire...

Charles Foran
2001