Lesley Downer's seven books range widely in genre and subject. Here she reflects on their inspiration and her experiences writing them.

"On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan" (1989): Downer's first book, a travelogue, recounts a journey she made in the footsteps of haiku poet Matsuo Basho's 17th-century work, "Oku no Hosomichi" ("The Narrow Road to the Deep North").

"I was thinking about the book and I thought, 'I don't need to go to 1,000 farming villages, I need to go to one farming village.' And the locals told me all the history of their village — that Basho had been there, and written haiku. They were all very into this. There was even a rock that [popular 12th-century folk-hero warrior-monk] Benkei had thrown in the garden of the headman."