“There are things being done on a global scale in my name as an American. it’s a tricky position to be in because, as a black American, it feels like those same things are being done to black people in this country.”

Threats to Colonialism:
Financial Independence
A Mind Expanded by Travel
Empathy

I met Lauren Wilkinson when we were both MFA students in fiction at Columbia University. Her poise and thoughtfulness were immediately apparent; then, she published a short story, “Safety Catch,” in Granta, and I had the opportunity to read her work and be deeply impressed by her talent. Lauren was so deftly able to increase narrative tension through several decades and geographic locations while also creating empathy for her protagonist, Marie Mitchell, a young woman of color working in the FBI during the 1980s. American Spy (Penguin Random House) is her first novel and an expansion of that story: Marie is consistently overlooked within the bureau for promotion because of her race and gender. She finally gets an opportunity for advancement when she’s asked to join a secret CIA task force to undermine Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso. As she falls in love with her target, Marie begins to question both the reasons for the U.S. government’s interference there as well as her own values. Sankara is a remarkably progressive leader striving to improve education, housing, and health care for his people. He is also a strong advocate for women’s rights. His example is a strong contrast to the closed-minded bureaucracy of her job. Why should she continue to work within a system—and a society—that does not recognize her worth?

Marie often debriefs her informants at diners. She’s found that the act of having a seemingly casual conversation in plain sight is a decent security measure. Lauren and I decided to have lunch at Veselka, a diner in the East Village, as a nod to this practice of Marie’s. Playing back the recording of our lunch, during which we discussed topics such as the extent to which American citizens are complicit in their government’s influence abroad, I can hear the clatter of utensils and plates, the murmuring of other patrons in the background. I wonder what other potential conversations are also ostensibly being recorded in plain sight.

I. An Illusion

THE BELIEVER: One of the aspects of your novel that I thought was so impressive is the transitions it makes in time and space. They feel so effortless. How was it like to blend all those locations together? I know when we were setting up the interview, you mentioned that your mother helped you...