Stan Grant is the ABC’s international affairs analyst and Vice-Chancellor’s chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. He won the 2015 Walkley Award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs and is the author of On Thomas Keneally, The Australian Dream, Australia Day, The Tears of Strangers, and Talking to My Country.

If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would it be, and why?

I have always been attracted to places with great bookstores. Obviously Paris, London, New York, but I’ve also found great hidden treasures in cities like Jerusalem, Yangon, and Islamabad.

What’s your idea of hell?

Haha. I am with Sartre – hell is other people! Not that he hates other people or that one should lock oneself away, only that we are trapped in the gaze of other people. It is why I bristle at ideas of identity, as if we can be reduced to a singular or simple idea of who we are or who we should be.