Harris is probably best known as the author of “Chocolat” which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated feature starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche.

“Novels never get reflected in film exactly, but I’m perfectly happy with the way the movie was set,” Harris explained.

The half British, half French writer has written a dozen novels, including her most famous titles, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, the Lollipop Shoes and Runemarks.

She studied Modern and Medieval languages at St Catharine’s College at Cambridge and worked as a teacher for more than a decade during which she wrote three novels, The Evil Seed becoming her debut.

She said style-wise it was very much like Wilkie Collins and recalled that the starting process was very scary. “Nobody wants to help, nobody wants to read what you’re writing.” Harris says, in many cases enjoyment of the writing process becomes the only result you’re going to get as an aspiring writer.

Juliette Binoche in romantic drama “Chocolat”

She told her fans in Moscow that she is never scared to write anything and the best complement for her is if somebody says to her, “Your book made me do something, for instance, feel sad, hungry, laugh, etc.” That is what Harris describes as the “perfect magic”.

“Writing for me is like method acting,” Harris explains. The novelist says she feels more comfortable describing something she’s experienced herself. “If I’ve never felt it before, I cannot write about it.”

Her award-winning books are published in forty countries. Who is her harshest critic?

“I’m the only one I listen to,” she says. “Now that I’m more successful, the editors lie to me so I need to listen only to the voice that’s mine!”

When Harris is not writing novels, she is either playing the bass guitar in a band which was first formed when she was 16 years old, or writing cookbooks. So far she has written two: The French Kitchen (possibly an homage to her French mother) and the French Market.

Harris says a lot of her cultural heritage is actually French. At some point she got so tired of people asking her for recipes that she decided to write a cookbook in order to give the money to charities. “I’ve donated the money to Médecins Sans Frontières, and they invited me to take a voyage to Congo with them.”

The voyage, she admitted, has given Harris enough “food for thought” which she will hopefully manage to turn into inspiring novels in the near future.

Valeria Paikova, RT