Debali Mookerjea-Leonard is a Bengali translator, author, and professor of English and world literature. She lives in Virginia with her husband and plants. She has translated the late Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel Blood. Set in Britain and America of the late 60s and early 70s, it is about a highly successful Bengali physicist Tapan who settles abroad. Despite all the successes he has garnered he is unable to put to rest the trauma he suffered as a child when his father was killed by a British officer. This occurred a little before India attained Independence. Coincidentally he meets Alice in London; she is the daughter of his father’s killer. Tapan’s world goes topsy-turvy as he tries to figure out what to do since he nurses a visceral hatred for the former colonial rulers of India. It is a peculiar situation to be in given that he has more or less decided to relocate abroad and never to return to India. It impacts his relationship with Alice too who is more than sympathetic to his feelings and is willing to let the past be bygones but it is a demon that Tapan finds hard to forget. He does go to India briefly to attend a wedding and meet his paternal grandmother — someone whom he loves dearly and who had lost two sons in the Indian Freedom Struggle. So much so that the Indian politicians are now keen to bestow upon her a monthly allowance recognising her sons’ contribution as freedom fighters. It is upon meeting his grandmother, who is past eighty and who witnessed much sorrow in her lifetime, that Tapan realises it is best to forget and forgive that which happened in the past and move on. Otherwise the past becomes an impossible burden to shed. Blood is a brilliantly translated novel that does not seem dated despite its preoccupations with the Indian Freedom struggle and a newly independent India. For all the stories and their intersections, it is evident that Blood is a modern novel which is worth resurrecting in the twenty-first century. The issues it raises regarding immigrants, familial ties, free will, social acceptance, loneliness, etc will resonate with many readers. As Debali says in the interview that “As an Indian expatriate myself, I found Sunil Gangopadhyay’s frank treatment of the subject refreshing.”
Sunil Gangopadhyay, who died in 2012, was one of Bengal’s best-loved and most-acclaimed writers. He is the author of over a hundred books, including fiction, poetry, travelogues and works for children. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Those Days. This novel Blood was first published in 1973.
Debali Mookerjea-Leonard
Here is a lightly edited interview conducted via email with the translator:
1 . How long did it take you to translate Blood? In the translator’s note you refer to two editions of the novel. What are the differences in the two editions?
I was on sabbatical during the spring semester of 2018 and Blood was my new project. I began working on it around the middle of January and completed the first draft in May. However, I let it sit for a year before returning to revise it.
I chose to use the second edition (1974) of Blood, rather than the first (1973), because the author made a few revisions. The alterations are minor, mostly cosmetic, and include replacing a few words in the text. These are mostly English words transliterated into Bengali: For instance, in Chapter 1, when Tapan asks Alice if she has the right glasses for serving champagne she responds, in the first edition, with “Don’t be fussy, Tapan” whereas, in the second, she says, “Don’t be funny, Tapan.” The revised second edition also corrects spelling errors and misprints.
2. The book may have been first published in 1973 but it seems a very modern text in terms of its preoccupations especially the immigrants. What were the thoughts zipping through your mind while translating the story?
To me the novel’s handling of immigrant concerns feels brutally honest. Blood refuses to romanticise the expatriate condition as exile and, instead, adopts an ironic stance towards immigrant angst, homesickness, and nostalgia. Yet, the irony is tempered with pathos in the narration’s uncovering of immigrant dilemmas. For instance, an Indian immigrant uneasy about her fluency in English chooses to stay indoors, but remains enamoured with England which she nevertheless cannot fully experience. Through the exchanges between the novel’s protagonist Tapan and his friend Dibakar, Blood also offers the realistic view that immigration is often driven by practical considerations. As an Indian expatriate myself, I found Sunil Gangopadhyay’s frank treatment of the subject refreshing.
This does not mean that western societies get a pass in the novel. Through situations both small and large the novel exposes the racist and anti-immigration views prevailing in the United Kingdom, during the 1960s. That said, Blood is also critical of racial prejudice amongst Indians. Given current debates around immigration and citizenship both in India and across the globe, the novel’s treatment of this subject remains relevant.
Connected to issues of migration and home, the novel brings to the fore complex questions about homeland and belonging, uncovering how the location of “home” has been rendered unstable through the Partition’s severing of birthplace and homeland.
3. What is the methodology you adopt while translating? For instance, some translators make rough translations at first and then edit the text. There are others who work painstakingly on every sentence before proceeding to the next passage/section. How do you work?
For me it is a mix of both. I typically plan on translating a text it in its entirety before proceeding with the revisions but this intention is usually short-lived and seldom lasts beyond the first few pages. I find it difficult to progress until the translation feels most appropriate to the context, fits the voice, and fully conveys the meaning of the original. While translating Blood I have spent entire mornings deciding between synonyms. It is like working on a jigsaw puzzle because there is only one piece/word that fits. And sometimes I have had to redraft an entire sentence (even entire paragraphs) to elegantly capture the sense of the whole!
4. What are the pros and cons a translator can expect when immersed in a project?
First, the cons, the impulse to interpret. And the pros: the joy of being able to partake in the (re-)making of something beautiful.
5. Are there any questions that you wished you could have asked Sunil Gangopadhyay while translating his novel?
Were he alive, I would have requested him to read a completed draft of my translation.
6. What prompted you to become a professional translator?
My translation-work is driven primarily by the love of the text and the desire to find it a larger audience. In the future, I hope to be able to devote more time to it.
There is also a pedagogical dimension to this. In my capacity as a teacher of world literature, I aim to expose students to the vast and rich body of vernacular writings from the Indian subcontinent, inevitably through translations. And from personal experiences in the classroom, I know that many of my students are genuinely curious about writings from around the world. Blood is a small step in that direction. It is a book I want to teach.
7. Which was the first translated book you recall reading? Did you ever realise it was a translation?
I believe the first translated book I read was one of the many “Adventures of Tintin”, The Secret of the Unicorn. But children’s books aside, the book that came to mind immediately upon reading your question is Gregory Rabassa’s translation of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. It may not have been the first translated work I read, but it ranks among the most memorable ones. This is because while I knew that Marquez wrote in Spanish, Rabassa’s translation preserved the novel’s artistic qualities so meticulously that it lulled me into thinking that I was reading the original. It is a quality I aspire to bring to my work.
8. How you do assess /decide when to take on a translation project?
Not to sound self-absorbed, but my decision is based largely on how deeply the work moves me. My first translation project involved a short story by the Bengali author Jyotirmoyee Devi, entitled “Shei Chheleta” (“That Little Boy”). It depicts the predicament of a young woman who lost a family-member in the Partition riots. The author handled the subject with great sensitivity without resorting to the maudlin. The story would not leave me alone. I had to translate it because I needed to share it, and discuss it with friends and colleagues who did not read Bengali. Similarly, Gangopadhyay’s novel intrigued me when I first read it. I thought about the characters long after I had finished the book, imagined their lives beyond the novel. I knew that one day I would translate it. It hibernated within me for years because, in the meanwhile, there were Ph.D. dissertations to write and research to publish. Finally, a sabbatical gave me the gift of time, and I just had to do it.
9. How would you define a “good” translation?
Preserving the artistic, poetic, and, of course, propositional content of the original is central to my understanding of a good translation. To resort to the old cliché, it is about conveying the letter and, perhaps more importantly, the spirit of the original. The translated text, I feel, must itself be a literary work, a work imbued with the beauty of the original. Additionally, readability is fundamental. Therefore, I asked family members and friends to read the draft translation for lucidity and fluency. For this reason, I am immensely gratified by your observation about Blood that, “It has been a long time since I managed to read a translation effortlessly and not having to wonder about the original language. There is no awkwardness in the English translation”.
10. Can the art of translating be taught? If so, what are the significant landmarks one should be aware of as a translator?
It is difficult for me to say since I never received any formal training in translation-work. To me, translation is more than just an academic exercise, it is an act of love — love for the text itself, love of the language, and the love of reading. For me the best preparation was reading, and reading widely, even indiscriminately. While my love of reading was nurtured from early childhood by my mother, I had the privilege of being exposed to some of the finest works of world literature through my training in comparative literature at Jadavpur University in Calcutta and, later, in literature departments in America.
11. Do you think there is a paradox of faithfulness to the source text versus readability in the new language?
The translator walks a tightrope between the two, where tipping towards either side is perilous. A translation is, by definition, derivative, so fidelity to the original text is essential. Yet, a translation of a literary work is much more than a stringing together of words in another language. It is itself a literary work. And it is incumbent upon the translator not only to make the work accurate and readable but also literary in a way that is faithful to the literary qualities of the original.
12. What are the translated texts you uphold as the gold standard in translations? Who are the translators you admire?
Gregory Rabassa’s translation of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; J.M. Cohen’s translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote; and A.K. Ramanujan’s translation of Ananthamurthy’s Samskara.
More recently, Supriya Chaudhuri, Daisy Rockwell, and Arunava Sinha have produced quality translations from Indian languages.
Historical fiction is always such a joy to read. If deftly created by an author with an informed imagination, then the pleasure of reading big fat tomes increases manifold. Two of the greatly anticipated books of this year arrived together — Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light and Kate Mosse’s The City of Tears. While Mantel’s book has already been released to great acclaim, Kate Mosse’s novel is due to be released at the end of May 2020. As expected The Mirror and the Light has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. ( The winner will be announced on 9 Sept 2020.)
Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light is the last in the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It is also the “fattest” volume of the three and was nearly eight years in the making. During the time Mantel was writing this particular novel, Wolf Hall ( the first in the trilogy) had been adapted for television.
The Mirror and The Light focusses on the final years of Thomas Cromwell. It begins with the execution of Anne Boleyn and concludes with Cromwell’s own execution. Many of these incidents are widely known even beyond the British Isles. It is a story that has gripped peoples imagination for centuries. But it is the manner of telling that is always new. Hilary Mantel’s interpretation of the incidents is entertaining as much has has to be imagined especially the conversations in private. It is a well-known fact that much of Thomas Cromwell’s papers were burnt at his request after his arrest. There are only snatches of correspondence and contemporary accounts that survive in different libraries and private collections. These have survived primarily because they belonged to others at the time of Cromwell’s death. To be historically accurate is a difficult proposition and this is where Hilary Mantel is able to exercise the creative freedom that a writer has to imagine scenarios. It is obvious that the author did spend a lot of time trying to be historically accurate as far as possible in terms of incidents, locations and other contemporary details. She makes a reference to it in this fabulous conversation with Pat Barker. Yet there were many moments while reading the novel that it made a lot of sense to dip in Revd. Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s incredible biography called Thomas Cromwell: A Life ( 2019). As an English historian and academic in Oxford University, specialising in ecclesiastical history and the history of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch spent more than six years researching and putting together details to recreate an astounding biography of Cromwell. So much so that even Mantel endorsed it saying “This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years”. For Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell’s role as an ally of Henry VIII who facilitated the split in the church to create the sects of Protestants and Catholics is fundamentally a religious action guided by political motivation. The inextricable link between Church and State cannot be ignored in MacCulloch’s account and it seeps through the telling of the history as well. (Here is a fascinating The British Academy 10-minute talk he gave on Thomas Cromwell.) Mantel too cannot ignore this link as it is the premise upon which Cromwell’s reputation as a powerful statesman and a member of the Royal Court resides. But it is her telling of the story that blurs these lines. Increasingly it seems with every page of this story that Mantel is very aware of two facts — 1) that she is writing this story for a modern secular audience for whom faith is only one aspect of a story and 2) her writing style is heavily influenced by different forms of storytelling. There are incidents in the descriptions of the crowds that gather in the streets for parades, to welcome the newest Queen or to watch a hanging, or in the conversations recounted, that always seem to be one step away from a script ready to be converted for a screen adaptation. Clearly Mantel’s loyalties lie more towards her readers than to the historical characters who have inspired her to write this award-winning trilogy. Her description of Cromwell’s execution is superb but the ghosts in the story make absolutely no sense. Diarmaid MacCulloch admits that Hilary Mantel and he may be writing about the same man but the differences are apparent — primarily because he is a historian and Mantel is a novelist. Even so a renowned critic as Daniel Mendelsohn was moved to say in his New Yorker review of the book that he had “started to wonder—a thought unimaginable during my reading of the first two books—whether this particular historical figure really merits nearly two thousand pages of fiction.” Daniel Mendelsohn “Hubris and Delusion at the end of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor Trilogy” ( 20 March 2020, The New Yorker)
Interestingly the founder of the Women’s Prize, Kate Mosse, has also released a historical fiction novel called The City of Tears. ( It is slated for release on 28 May 2020.) It is the second part of a family saga that is set in France, a little after Mantel’s Tudor trilogy, during the Wars of Religion. Mosse’s historical fiction series is going to be spanning three centuries detailing the lives of the Huguenots (Protestants) and the Royal family (Catholics) in France. According to Mosse it will travel from sixteenth-century France and Amsterdam to the Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The City of Tears is set at the time of the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 23 August 1572. It is an immensely readable account of the conflict between the two factions. The main characters whose story is narrated in this series are purely fictional but are a means to enter the period and recount the horrific events of the time. Many of the details would resonate with the modern reader for the sectarian violence and the refugees created. As Mosse states in her note that the “characters and families are imagined though inspired by the kind of people who might have lived ordinary men and women, struggling to live, love and survive against a backdrop of religious war and displacement. Then, as now.” It is a pleasure to read The City of Tears for it may be classified as commercial fiction and tells a fantastic tale of a family, love and tears with some swashbuckling action thrown in for good measure but through it all Kate Mosse is very clear that the events detailed are because of religious differences. The violence and the misery it brought in its wake was wholly unnecessary then as it is now. The City of Tears is a gripping tale that can easily be adapted to screen but none of it intrudes in the telling of the story as happens in The Mirror and the Light.
Nevertheless it has been a pleasure to read both the novels in quick succession. And I am glad I did!
Retelling of Indian mythology by Indian novelists is proving to be quite an interesting exercise as it is allows the modern storyteller to choose and stress upon different aspects of the epics. Aditya Iyengar is one such writer. He writes Indian mythological and historical tales through the eyes of often unexplored and peripheral characters. His works include – The Thirteenth Day,Palace of Assassins, A Broken Sun, The Conqueror and Bhumika. His novel Bhumika was longlisted for the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year 2020. He lives in Mumbai.
How did you get into professional writing?
I’ve always been a voracious reader. But I think somewhere in my mid-twenties, I decided I wanted to attempt to write a novel. I think the confidence came after reading Arun Kolatkar’s poetry and Kiran Nagarkar’s seminal Cuckold. Somehow these made me feel that I could express myself through the English language but in an Indian idiom in a manner that felt entirely natural.
I’ve always been fond of mythology, historical and science fiction, so I knew I wanted to attempt one of these genres. I don’t remember why I decided to write a mythological retelling over the other genres. Perhaps because the story I had for my first novel (The Thirteenth Day) was the clearest in my head. Anyway, it took me a few years to actually develop it into something resembling a coherent narrative.
I don’t write for a living. I have a day job that doesn’t involve creative writing (though creative writing as a skill comes in handy in virtually every trade). It’s a conscious call I’ve taken to take the pressure off my writing. Also, the writing life is a lonely one, and natural introverts like me would never meet people if they decided to stay at home and write all day.
2. What appeals to you in telling the kind of stories that you choose to tell? Stories that are based in myth?
I’m a huge fan of mythological retellings and historical fiction. The past, whether it’s historical or epic, is strange and exciting territory There’s something about reading about characters from the past or from epic fiction and feeling a human kinship with them. In a way it reminds one that we are all connected, and through the years have had the same motivations.
3. How did you develop a passion for mythology? Are there any favourite retellings of the mythological tales that appeal to you?
Growing up, I was very fascinated by historical and mythological stories. I’m not sure why. I’ve certainly never analysed it. Some kids are interested in sports, some find science projects fun – I just really enjoyed reading history and mythology. My childhood fascination for the past (both historical and epic), I think, came out through my novels. Some of my favourite mythological retellings have been K.M. Munshi’s wonderful Krishnavatara, C Rajagopalachari and Kamala Subramaniam’s retellings of the Mahabharata, and Colleen McCullough’s The Song of Troy (which is based on the Illiad).
4. How do you plan your novels? I used to be a rigorous planner. I made notes for chapters, listed out characters, motivations, and tried to find what Vince Gilligan, the head writer of Breaking Bad calls “where the character’s head is at”. I’ve written five novels. My preparatory notes have reduced for each novel to the point that I wrote Bhumika with only a broad story in mind, and no chapter-wise road map. I’ve come to the conclusion that every novel requires a different process of planning. But if you have a broad story in your head, the details can be worked out as you write the novel. One doesn’t necessarily need to work out details before they start the novel, though it can be helpful even if one does.
5. What is your daily discipline to write?
I don’t write every day. I only write when I’m working on a project. Mostly, I get up early, work on my book for a little while, then head for work. Sometimes, I come back from the office and work for a bit too. On weekends, I wake up early and work till about 5 pm, after which I turn off my laptop.
I sit on a rocking chair, and balance my laptop on my lap and type. I don’t eat or drink anything except at meal times, and I end up eating very little if I’m absorbed in my work. I don’t read or watch anything on the telly during these times too. It’s a fairly hermit-like existence. Write, Go to Office, Return, Eat, Sleep and Repeat. Of course, such a lifestyle is unsustainable, so I normally write and finish novels within a few months. I have a healthy respect for deadlines, so I set myself a schedule and try hard to stick to it.
6. How much research does a book entail?
The level of research really depends on the novel. For my historical fiction novel – The Conqueror, I needed to read up on the Chola kingdom and the Srivijaya empire in Indonesia. I read a number of books and many academic papers and articles before I began writing the novel. A lot of my research was also shaped by the elements I wanted to include in the novel – for example, I wanted to write about one of the characters getting heavily drunk so I did research on the kinds of liquors that were available in those times.
For my Mahabharata and Ramayana novels, the research is limited since I already know most of the events through childhood retellings (Thanks, Mom!). Though I have also read some incredible translations that have helped shape my perspective. My mytho-fantasy series on Ashwatthama starts after the events of the Mahabharata and is entirely fictional.
7. What has changed in your writing style from the first book to the present one?
I’d like to believe my style is now more compact. I can express myself with fewer words. Also, I’m more confident using the full toolkit of punctuation marks. When I began, I would only use full-stops and abhorred any use of exclamation marks or colons and semi-colons. While I’m still very, very judicious about how I sprinkle those exclamations, I’ve learned how they can be used appropriately, for maximum effect.
8. Are there any particular darlings in your writing that you have had to kill off knowing it is for the good of the manuscript? Does it hurt to take these decisions?
Oh no, I absolutely couldn’t kill any of my darlings. Take some meat off them, yes – but what is the point of writing for pleasure if you have to kill your darlings?
9. Why create Bhumika in the way you did when the trend seems to be to retell stories in the way we have inherited the narratives?
I think our ideas of the purity of inherited narratives are not accurate. There have been several retellings and re-interpretations of the epics over the years and across different regions all over the country. I’d like to believe I’m following in a grand tradition of re-interpreting stories to make them more contemporary, like so many writers better than me have done before.
10. When do you find the time to read?
I don’t really read anymore. Not like I used to at any rate. I’m currently plodding through Richard Eaton’s A Social History of The Deccan, which is a tragedy because it is such a lovely book that I would finish it in a few days under normal circumstances. These days, between the job and daily chores, I find all my time going in the business of the day. I try reading in snatches of time – before going to bed or after finishing my work or before breakfast – and hastily devour as much of the book as possible. It’s almost become like having a clandestine lover. You meet with great difficulty, away from the eyes of the world, and cherish every moment together.
11. How many more novels have you drafted?
I’ve written a novel set in the film industry – it’s a dark comedy, but it’s languishing on my desktop because I haven’t had the time to do a FINAL FINAL.doc edit. Other than that, I have a few ideas for novels (two historical and one mythological) that I have yet to begin working on.
Last year Scholastic India published a marvellous collection of essays on reading. It is called Why I Love to Read: Real Stories about the Joy and Power of Reading. It is in keeping with the firm’s fundamental principle that reading opens up a world of possibilities. Reading is a lifelong skill. This anthology had a broad spectrum of contributors from across India. It included politicians, educationists, journalists, writers, publishers, poets, sociologists etc. I too contributed an essay. It was on how I managed to get my little girl to read modern English by introducing her to Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The moment I introduced Sarah to medieval English where everything was spelt phonetically, the pennies dropped and she was able to make the relevant connections while reading modern English. So here is the essay that I am reproducing with the permission of the publisher.
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“They even have books in their bathroom!” exclaimed a friend to other classmates while describing our childhood home. Little has changed. Recently my daughter reported how her classmates describe our home as being full of books wherever you look! My nine-year-old is convinced that books are her birth right. She demands books she issues from the library and enjoys immensely to be bought for her personal collection as well.
My family loves books. We have done so for generations. We have inherited books that are now more than a century old. My childhood bedroom which I shared with my twin brother had an entire wall made of deep wooden bookshelves. I had rows of books three deep and more stacked on top.
I do not know what sparked my love for reading. It could have been my mother who decided to read out the texts she was teaching to her undergraduate students. Mum is a fantastic storyteller. So by the time we were six we knew our Shakespeare, Dracula along with breathless Piglet saying “Heff, Heff, Heffalump” from Winnie-the Pooh or she made up wonderfully imaginative tales. Or it could be my maternal grandfather who after lunch would tell us about the outrageous escapades about Laurel and Hardy traipsing through North East India – all totally made up of course! (My Nana as a senior civil servant had visited the region in the 1960s and 70s.) Or my paternal grandmother who would tell us stories about Shaikh-Chilli and other folktales at bed time. Or it could have been my bedridden great-grandmother who would tell us stories about Delhi and Dalhousie during British Raj including of C.F. Andrews or Charlie Dada as she referred to him fondly. He would arrive regularly at her home in Dalhousie with nothing except the clothes on his back. After every visit she would send him off on his travels once more with a bistar-band/ bedding holdall and clothes but he would inevitably distribute them to a more needy soul. My father is not much of a storyteller in words but as a photographer he is astounding. He brought home interesting guests, inevitably mountaineers and photographers, who would regale us with amazing tales of climbing some of the highest peaks in the world or taking photographs under extraordinary circumstances.
It was a short step from being surrounded by stories to reading the books lining our shelves. My mother too developed a neat trick of stocking our bookshelves with books just a little ahead of our biological years so we were never out of reading matter. Alternatively she would borrow huge piles of books from her college library and suggest books of all kinds – ranging from Georgette Heyer romances, Gerald Durrell’s animal stories, Homer, Malory, historical fiction to science fiction. We were well brought up kids. We even knew Asimov’s Three Robotic Laws fairly soon! Once mum realised I was getting frightfully bored by sixteenth century English Literature, she suggested a range of historical novels of the Elizabethean period. I developed a lifelong soft corner for it. As children we were encouraged to read anything that came our way. We spent most of our free time reading.
Initially I read what existed at home but slowly developed a passion for buying books and later even inherited personal libraries. I have an eclectic and vast collection of books. Now an entire floor in my parent’s home has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the walls. In my marital home I have a study (and more) that is lined with bookshelves — anything to prevent my forming book towers! Even now my happiest moments are when I am surrounded by books and reading. It gives me peace. It is also as a parent I realise excellent role modelling. Children imitate their parent’s actions.
As a parent now I encourage my daughter to read anything she likes. Digital entertainment is rationed. When she was struggling to understand how English is written and spoken, I introduced her to my beautiful of Aubrey Beardsley’s Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Very soon the kid was able to “read” the story as Middle English was written exactly as phonetics is practised. It made it even more fascinating that the stories were about her favourite trio – King Arthur, Merlin and Queen Guinevere. One of her favourite past times is to read the spines of my books. (She even began reading this essay and wanted to know why I was writing about reading? It puzzled her – why on something as basic as reading?) The best inheritance I can give my daughter is of reading as a valuable lifelong skill and not just for leisure.
For now she is a happy kid who said to me reading out aloud from Diary of a Wimpy Kid “This is so easy to read. It is like an early learners reading!”
I read Gaël Faye’s book more than a year ago. Loved every word of it even though the story itself is horrific about the Rwanda genocide. The genocide began in April 1994 and lasted 100 days. Some 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, were killed. Gaël Faye’s French-Rwandan wife’s Tutsi grandmother was also killed after taking refuge in a church. Small Country is a heartbreakingly painful story to read but it does not leave you in a hurry. It is magnificently translated into English by Sarah Ardizzone. For ever so long I had wanted to meet/interview Gaël Faye. In Jan 2020, Gael Faye was invited to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival. I did get the opportunity to meet him at the French Institute in Delhi. Unfortunately, due to a set of unusual circumstances I was caught in a traffic snarl and could not make it to the venue in time. Instead Isabelle Jaitly stepped in to interview Gael Faye on my behalf. She asked him the questions I had drafted and added some of her splendid ones as well. The interview was conducted in French since they are both fluent in the language. Isabelle has translated it from French into English. It has taken time as it is a long and complicated process. It involved first transcribing the interview from an audio recording and then translating it into English. The translation was also delayed by factors beyond our control — the Covid19 pandemic. It effectively forced the French government to cancel the Book Fair in Paris where India was going to be the guest of honour. Isabelle who works at the French Institute in Delhi was inundated with first the planning for the fair and then helping with the aftermath. It has been a surreal year. So I am truly delighted to publish on my blog this extraordinary interview with an extraordinary singer-cum-author and an extraordinary backstory!
Gaël Faye is an author, songwriter and hip-hop artist. He released his first solo album in 2013, with his first novel following in 2016. Born in 1982 in Burundi to a French father and Rwandan mother, Faye moved with his family to France in 1995 after the outbreak of the civil war and Rwandan genocide. His debut novel Small Country was published to international acclaim. Written in French it has been translated brilliantly by Sarah Ardizzone. A lot must have been called upon her to invest in this translation. To delve into another language, capture the rhythms and transfer them seemingly seamlessly from the language of origin to the destination language is never an easy feat but Sarah has done it brilliantly. I do not know French but am familiar with it sufficiently to know the softness of the spoken word in French is very different to the cadences that English has to offer. I do not know how else to say it since I only know English. Yet, while reading Small Country I could not get over the fluidity of the prose. At times one forgets it is a translated text that one is reading.
Gaël Faye is a poet, rapper, musician, so rhythm probably comes easy to him. It is in all likelihood a part of his being, his DNA. Those who have music in them walk, talk and breath music and rhythms. If you witness such musically talented people, then it is pure joy to see them move and talk. Even an ordinary conversation with them takes on a precision that is delightful to experience. And somehow this oneness of spirit with music makes them seem like free spirits too. It conveys itself beautifully when such talented souls express themselves. Murakami says in his conversations Absolutely on Music that rhythm is important the text.
In the case of Small Country the boy-narrator comes across as a medium for sharing many of Gaël Faye’s own experiences or perhaps events he has witnessed. Using the fictional literary device tends to distance the author from the event. Yet using the first person to narrate events makes it so personal but also continues with the fictional deception of something so horrific. The only time the mask seems to fall is when the narrator recounts his mother’s witnessing of the murders in Rwanda. And that is not even a technique. It just comes across as someone who must at all accounts convey what his mother witnessed. In fact if you read transcripts of testimonies of women traumatised by conflict, the tone is this. The only difference is that while the mother in the book never really slips into the third person, all women survivors of a conflict situation always speak in the third person especially when they come to that particular point of describing the actual trauma. It is extraordinary but this is a fact that has been documented over and over again through decades of research on gender and conflict. While absorbed in the story the turn of events are not questioned even the deadpan monotone manner in which the mother tells her story at the dining table. Even her slow descent into a “madness” is done brilliantly. It is later upon closing the book that so many questions come to my mind. For instance, this eye-witness account has to be true. Probably the mother is an amalgamation of many such witness accounts or perhaps it is someone extremely close to Gaël Faye. Then I wondered how on earth did Gaël Faye capture this deadpan manner of narrating the genocide? Did he record it? Did he revise this portion? The translation too would have been tough leaving its mark on the translator. This is not a passage easily forgotten.
The fluidity of the prose is breath-taking. It is meditative so when the long passages on reading appear, the mind is sufficiently lulled to appreciate every moment of that experience…a trance-like space that seasoned readers will recognise. Then it is explosively disrupted with the accounts of lynching, the stench of death, hatred and sheer ugliness of the revenge violence unleased everywhere. It is frightening.
The maturity of the boy-narrator to express himself so clearly in his interior monologues can only come with time. A layered narrative if there ever was one. It is as if the adult-boy is reflecting back on the past without in any way undermining what he saw as a 10/11-year-old boy. It is a tough balance to achieve. But I often got the sense while reading Small Country how did Gael know when to stop layering the memories? My apologies for intermingling the fictional and the real experiences but there are some moments in the book that are too real to be ever imagined by a sane human being. The description of the mother coming upon the rotting bodies of her nieces and nephews that her hand goes through the pieces while she attempts to gather their remains for a decent burial. Once the book is read the images of the genocide and the slaughter of the crocodile for a birthday feast merge into one. I had a zillion questions for Gael. So when presented with an opportunity to interview him, I posed some of them.
Here are lightly edited excerpts of the interview conducted by Isabelle Jaitly and Jaya Bhattacharji Rose.
1. Why write a novel, rather than a long poem?
That’s a form I had never tried and I had been wanting to write a novel for a long time. And as I already write songs, which are for me some kind of poems, I felt there was a certain limit to this form. At the same time I imagine that this novel is in a way a long poem, because I tried to introduce poetry in it as much as I could, as indeed I try to put poetry in everything I write.
Was it unsettling going from a very constraining form to a very free form?
One has to find one’s bearing. I used some ‘devices’ to help myself in this. I wrote letters inside the novel; the narrator sends letters to someone and these letters acted in a way as milestones, which gave a sense of time and frame to the action. A little bit like rhymes in a song. That said, one never knows how to write a novel, it’s through trials and errors.
2. What do you prefer: prose or poetry?
It depends on the mood… I like to navigate from one to the other. But in a way, poetry is not a form in itself. Poetry can be found everywhere. There is such a thing as a prose poem! There is no tight limit, no frontier between the two.
3. Can reading a book change a person? How do you think your book may have impacted others?
Yes, a book can alter the way you see the world, alter things within oneself. I have been through it, and I imagine others have as well. About my book, it’s difficult to speak on behalf of my readers, but from what I have seen through the feedback I have got, it has helped many people unlock silences in their families, or admit things to themselves that they have been able to own, like the experience of exile, or a trauma from the war or genocide. I have received these kinds of feedbacks. In a lighter vein, many people have discovered a reality they had no idea about though my novel. I have received feedback from Afghan readers, from Iran. But not from India, and I am looking forward to it.
And you, have you ever been changed by a book?
Yes, and even by several books. One author who had a great influence on me is René Duprestre, from Haiti. I was overwhelmed when I started reading him. He was for me like a mentor, a sort of Pygmalion. Another book answered many questions I had in my childhood, about my metis, the book of ‘peau noire, masques blancs’ (Black Skin, White Masks) a book by Frantz Fanon, a writer from Martinique. it helped me come to terms with my origins without being in conflict with them. And the list can go on. I go on reading amazing books, which in a way change my outlook. But the books we read as teenagers have a very strong effect on us. As teenagers, we are in the process of being formed, so my strongest emotions as a reader happened during that time.
4. Was it difficult to write about the genocide?
Not really. I spend part of the year in Rwanda, I come from a family who went through the genocide, who are survivors. We live with this. And I find that my novel, on the contrary, considerably minimizes what happened. I didn’t open a wardrobe full of memories I wanted to forget. These are things with which I live, because around me the society lives with it, the society in Rwanda lives with the genocide. So the biggest difficulty for me was to make this part of history accessible to those who have not gone through it. So, in a way, to bring it to a universal level. And avoid thinking: this is a genocide that concerns a far away country in Africa, so it’s not my story, it’s not my business. I wanted to make this story a topic of discussion to anybody anywhere
5. What about the pain?
No, there was no pain. I am always surprised to see how people want it to have been painful. No, this is work, so there are days when it’s harder than others, but not emotionally. It is painful for the narrator, but not for me, I am the writer! It is my job to make it feel real, to give the feeling that for the character, there are doubts, there is pain and suffering. But me, as a writer, I sit at my table, and some days the writing comes easily, and I am pleased, and some days, I am depressed, because I haven’t been able to express my thoughts the way I wanted. This is the daily life of any writer. It may be surprising, but I wrote this novel with a lot of joy, a real lightness. Only one scene was difficult for me to write, and that is the scene of the mother being violent towards her daughter. It wasn’t easy, this scene, because I have children, and somehow I did a transfer, of a parent hitting their child, and that was probably the hardest scene. Of course the scene of the mother who comes back from Rwanda and, sitting at the table with her family, tells about what she has seen there, that was not easy, but here again, it so much falls short of what really happened, of what I hear everyday, of the story told by those who have survived, that, in the end, writing about it was not as hard as one could think. The hardest for me is to find the form through which to express all this. The ideas are there. There are so many topics I want to write about in my songs, in novels. but the hardest for me is to find the angle, the right angle. And this, you can not learn, you have to try out, and that’s always the hardest thing, whether you write a song or a novel. Let’s say, I want to write about peace: It’s so cliché, everyone has written a song about peace! But actually, nothing is ever cliché, you just have to find the right angle. Same about love.
So what may be surprising here is to see that this novel is not an autobiography, it is a novel. Although the title Small Country refers to one of your most popular songs, “Petit Pays”.
Yes, that’s right, it’s not an autobiography. But here again, it’s complicated… I think every novel is a form of autobiography. Here, there’s a great closeness between me and the character: his origins, the context in which he spends his childhood, what he goes through during his childhood, this time of war, and indeed I have gone through this myself, the transition from a time of peace to war… but if you go into details, what happens to him is not at all what happened to me. Of course I used my feelings at the time to write about him, but everyone does that when writing a novel. It’s a material, and everything becomes a material.
7. What prompted you to write this book?
First it’s the frustration of not being able to put all this in a song. I wrote a song called ‘L’ennui des après midi sans fin’ (‘The boredom of never ending afternoons’), which was very long, with a long text, and I had the frustration of not having said everything: about childhood, about the time of insouciance. So that’s how I started the novel: I wanted to expand on this song. Then, there were the events, in my area of Paris, the attack against Charlie Hebdo. Suddenly, there were scenes of war in Paris. It took me back 20 years. Hearing the Kalashnikov, the atmosphere of fear, or terror even. I lived for two years in the war. So there was a feeling of déja vu, a feeling well buried which came back in the everyday setting of Paris, it was very strange. That also fed the desire I had to write about the cocoons one creates around oneself. In the novel, there is a space that is that of the impasse (dead-end). This is a symbolic space for me: it’s the space where one withdraws, a space which is a cocoon, and at the same time this space becomes a trap. So there’s a swaying between the two. And to me, life in France has this feature: a mix between the cocoon, the desire to see the world through an idealised typical image, as if everything is fine and going well. It creates a distance with the world and its violence. At the same time, the world and its violence catch up, because there is no frontier between human interactions, and a conflict that happens at the other end of the world can impact France. So there was this ambivalence. And this child, in the novel, finds himself in this desire to create a distance between him and the violence around him.
8. Why do you use a child, a boy-narrator, as a literary device? Does it make it any easier to cross boundaries within a disintegrating society and offer multiple perspectives that only a child can offer –more or less without judgement?
This too was through trial and errors. At the beginning, I wrote the novel through the voice of an adult, and actually this voice still comes through here and there. Finally, I chose the voice of the child. It gave me an angle, because it allowed me to unfold the story through the eyes of a character who doesn’t know the environment he is in, more than the reader. Adults tend to always be one step ahead. The child is innocent in the political environment; he will discover it at the same time as the reader. That allowed to be didactic without showing it. And it was essential for a story that speaks about a country, Burundi, about a history, the history of the Great Lakes region, that nobody knows anything about. This way, the character goes forward at the same time as the reader. This way I don’t have to explain and justify feelings and motives. Adults, especially on the issue of ethnicity, find reasons to explain even absurd situations. I liked the naive point of view of the child, who will ask questions, because he doesn’t understand, and actually there is nothing to understand, because it is absurd. This is what comes through at the beginning with the explanations about ethnicity being divided according to the shape of their noses. This is a reality. But it’s absurd of course Children don’t find excuses. They look at the world as it is.
Beforehand, I wasn’t conscious about it, but now, I am very aware of how much the reader looks for the writer in a book. It think it is a mistake (a flaw). Maybe it goes with the society we live in, where everyone stages himself, stages his life, this world of reality shows… for me, a novel is a novel, it’s a story. Whether the writer has lived this story or not, what matters is whether one is carried away, touched by the story. Being invented doesn’t, for me, affect the power of a story. But I do wonder… my book has been translated in more than 40 languages, I have travelled a lot, met a lot of readers, and this question keeps coming back.
10. If people believe so much that it happened to you, it’s a compliment to the power of conviction of your writing.
Yes, it maybe a compliment, but what if it hadn’t happened? What does it take away from the book? If everything had been invented from beginning to end, for me that wouldn’t take anything away from the book, from a story. Actually I am very shy about my life, I don’t share anything about it. Unless someone is an historic figure, like Mandela, or Martin Luther King, I don’t feel there is a point to write an autobiography, according to me at least. And real lives are always so much more complex that lives in novels. If I wrote about my life, nobody would believe me, because my life is 100 times more complex. A novel allows to give the broad lines, so that the reader can identify with the character or the story. Going into complexity, one looses the link we have with the reader. I believe this is the role of artists: what is the common denominator between human beings, that allows to bring human beings together. These are often banalities, such as love, friendship, hate, war, things that are experienced everywhere. The story has to be simple. If you go too much into complexities, you lose the distancing. And this is not what a novel is about; at least, it is my point of view.
11. With the intentional blurring of the lines between the lived and the fictional landscape, it becomes hard for the reader to separate the identities of the boy-narrator and the author. Why did you choose an opening to the novel with a bar scene, reflection and then a flashback to a conversation between father and son before plunging into a conversation? Why not begin the novel straightaway? Why the artifice? It is not as if it any way eases the shock and distress at seeing the violence erupt.
It is not a device. The voice of the adult at the beginning comes back at the end. I did it to speak about something that is close to my heart: the feeling of exile. If I had started with the voice of the child, this feeling would have not been there, and I wanted it to hang over the novel (suffuse?). I wanted it to be a novel about exile. Because I would never have written a book, if I had stayed in Burundi. I feel this very deeply. It is the distance with my country that allowed it. Actually, when I went to live in Rwanda, went back to the region where I spent my childhood, the writing dried up. I couldn’t write any more about the country, the environment: it was here, under my eyes, and I needed the distance. It’s like love letters. It fills a vacuum. Writing for me had this function for many years. So I wanted there to be a character that made the reader feel certain things. This character says things that are essential, for example about exile being a door that is left ajar. Saying that the exiled person is not the one who decides to leave, but the one who has to flee. Another important aspect is that we know, we guess from the beginning that this child is going to be confronted to war, and that either it will end badly for him, or he will have to flee. That’s what happens. But I wanted to show that the region I come from is not an open sky cemetery. Yes, there is war and violence, but life goes on. Businesses spring back on their feet, they go on. So it was important for me that the character should leave, and also come back. Africa is not a continent that the character leaves, and nothing else happens, it falls into oblivion. The link with one’s past is always there. So it was important for me to have this voice, this point of view too in the novel. It also shows, through this, what happens to a child who goes through all this, what kind of an adult he can become. If one stops at childhood, there is no hint about what this child may become later. And I am passionate about imagining the trajectory of people, where they come from and what they become. In my family, people have had incredible destinies. Born in a village, with nothing, they go on to live in world capitals, do long studies, get jobs. I am always fascinated to see how, in a few years, one can change one’s condition. So, emotionally, I find this interesting.
You say we can be changed by a book. What changes do you hope to see though this book?
My hope is simply to make life in Burundi human and tangible. It’s not just a statistic. Burundi, Rwanda, these are countries one only see through the prism of war and violence. So obviously the point of view is distorted. One cannot imagine that families there may live normal, simple, happy lives. There are no novels about Burundi. I certainly have never seen one. So this is like a manifest: we existed, we had simple, banal lives. I wanted to give it a voice. It’s not much, but it’s already something. I want to remove the exotic, the set images, set ideas. I am part of a new generation of writers writing about the region. And as such, we constantly have to go back to explain things from the beginning. We have to explain the history of the place, because it is unknown. When I got an award in 2016 from high school students (Prix Goncourt des Lycéens), many young people told me they didn’t know about the Great Lakes region. The hope is that one day we can write stories without having to go through this didactic process. I hope we will allow this to happen for the younger, next generation… They will be able to write about lighter, more banal stories, love stories, and science fiction.
12 Has the success of Small Country been paralyzing for you?
Writing has moments of epiphany, great joy, where I feel: this is why I write! But it is also great suffering. You have to give a part of yourself, to put part of yourself on the line. I need this to feel that the work is sincere. This is probably due to the fact that I started writing for reasons that were not light reasons: war, being a witness etc. So my pointer is always this: Am I being sincere? There is already so much noise on this planet, everywhere, non stop. Why add to it? I need to feel that my writing is not gratuitous. If I take the attention of people, it is to bring something to them, not to say, hello, I exist. It is so tempting today to exist just for existing. When we open a book, we try to create silence around us, in us. Great songs are the same for me. They bring you something that you can’t hear otherwise. The artist has to fight the urgency. We are pushed into it. But it’s like a child who needs nine months to be born. The artist needs a gestation period which cannot be dictated. It’s only an intimate feeling that can tell us that we are ready, we have found the right angle, the right voice. So I know that the process I am in at the moment, of writing a new novel, is complicated. There is an expectation: but that, I have to forget about. But mainly it is complicated because I want to put myself on the line. It’s fascinating, but it’s crazy, so much work! Put oneself on the line and at the same time remember that nobody is waiting for it, it remains something superfluous. Radicalism is dangerous. There is no radicalism; the most radical thing in the world is to find a balance — take it from a metis person!
‘It may not take the form of sticks and stones or result in immediate action, but if the collapse is as big as I fear, then old orders will be replaced.’ ‘Crashes are like laxatives. There is nothing like a good round of bankruptcies to get the art market flowing. People like me live off the three Ds: debt, death and divorce. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, one imagining opportunities, the other foreseeing disaster.
Hannah Rothschild’s latest novel The House of Trelawney is ostensibly about the Trelawney’s and their crumbling manor. It is about three generations living together under one roof. The elderly Viscount and his wife, their son and heir Kitto and his family — Jane, his wife and three children. The youngest generation consists of the abnoxious Ambrose, the sweet and lovable Toby and the sharply intelligent Arabella, a complete misfit in her family. Arabella is much like her grand-aunt, Tuffy, who is modelled on the Dame Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005); a brilliant British naturalist and a world expert on the flea.
It has been touted as a comic look at the decaying aristrocrat way of living but then comic forms of work are really a thinly disguised version of supremely intelligent wit. TheHouse of Trelawney is a superb account of three generations of aristocracy, every generation representative of it’s moment in history. As a result what emerges beautifully is how far each generation has “evolved”. The oldest generation has lived and witnessed aristocracy as all legends about it exist. Splendid social gatherings with the incumbent Viscount not having to think of “work”. The Countess was kept busy managing the large household and the guests. The younger generation consists of the children who are really not very comfortable belonging to the upper most social strata as it seems to have invisble bonds preventing them freedom. The eldest, Ambrose, who is set to inherit the title, is very unhappy at the thought of inheriting a worthless inheritance and a ramshackle manner whose maintenance will require more than a penny to maintain. The second son, sweet and gentle Toby, is lovesick but discovers to his dismay that he is in the crosshairs of a rigid social structure which is creating a rift between the young couple. The youngest and of a difficult temperament is the ever-inquisitive Arabella who drives her mother bats but then to everyone’s joy forges a comfortable relationship with her grand-aunt, a renowned entomologist. The sandwich generation of Kitto and Jane have seen their fortunes disappear rapidly except for their social graces and enviable status they have in society. Kitto married Jane for her money and not love although she had been in love with him since they were fourteen year olds. Yet with their crumbling (mis)fortunes, many of which are brought upon the family by Kitto’s ill-advised investments, it is Jane who is the “fall guy”. Jane is responsible for caregiving of the elderly and very kindly maintaining pretences of their past lifestyle, cooking and cleaning for three teenagers — even if it meant buying the economy pack of mince and feeding it them day in and day out, tackling the every growing pile of bills but making little dent in it, managing the chickens, a horse and a labrador — managing it all even if it stretched her, leaving little time for herself. Until she discovered the perfect hideout for her creative outlet — a printing press. She stumbled upon it shuttered up in one of the erstwhile servants quarters.
Jane had found the printing press ten years earlier while trying to locate the source of a leak in the third ballroom. She’d never been to that section of the fourth floor before and was amazed to discover thirty nearly identical rooms, each almost bare save for twin iron beds and a small cupboard, the stapble furniture of junior domestic staff. Opening the door of Room 128, Jane wondered why, and for that matter how, anyone would heave a laundry mangle to the attic so far from the washing rooms downstairs. Forgetting the search for the leak, she examined the heavy cast-iron table with a large metal roller at one end. Using all her strength, she managed to turn it around, forcing the roller majestically and rustily from one end to another. The contraption must have weighed half a ton. Intrigued, Jane opened the neatly stacked wooden crates lining the wall. They contained blocks of typefaces and letters in different fonts and dried-out bottles of ink. In a nearby cubpard she found some fading printed posters, all related to the suffragette movement and specifically to a women’s march from Penzance to London on 19th June 1913. Jane laughed out loud. Someone had deliberately hidden the press in the furthest maid’s room in the attic, where neither the butler nor any member of the family would dream of venturing. It made her happy to think that, deep within the hear of this ancient bastion of absolute male hegemony, there had existed a small and defiant opposition: a group of feminists prepared to risk their jobs and livelihoods for the rights of their own sex.
Let us not forget the cast of characters also include the absolutely atrocious noveau-riche hedge-fund billionaire Thomlinson Sleet; his third wife, an Indian princess Ayesha who is linked to the family of Trelawneys; Blaze, the incredibly successful financial analyst and sister to Kitto and Joshua Wolfe, the discrete but immensely successful financier. It is a fantastic mix of a very interesting cross-section of society, where irrespective of how much wealth they already possess ( or not), their primary focus is on being financially successful. There are incredibly interesting conversations that have been brilliantly etched by Hannah Rothschild. A sharp understanding of how there is an economic basis to every relationship. Inheriting enviable social titles without money in the bank is meaningless just as is having the ability to buy titles with new money while lacking class. At the same time being gender blind as many of the people in the novel are towards the three strong women — Tuffy, Jane and Blaze with Arabella showing excellent signs of following in their footsteps. Whether related by blood or living together under the same roof makes no difference to most of the extended clan at seeing the wonderful qualities these women possess of retaining their individuality, carving a professional space for themselves as did Tuffy and Blaze or managing home and hearth while being sensitive and caring especially towards the elderly as exemplified by Jane. Whereas the men carry on doing what they know best — the ageing Viscount who in his younger days was known for his ways with women but is now a sad grumbling wreck of his former self; his son Kitto who is presumed to inherit the title lives in his own world as CEO of a bank opting to shuttle between London and the dilapidated manor, hoping in a quick turn of fortune rather than putting in the requisite hard work; Kitto’s sons Ambrose and Toby are still in school. Ambrose is the eldest, educated at a posh school and detested by everyone at home for his snobbery. Toby is the kinder soul who is muddled about being born into the social upper crust while his friends are from the local village. The other characters such as the Dowager Countess Clarissa, the grand-uncle and art dealer Tony, the cook and her grandson are equally critical to the story as they are like the chorus of a play. Yet it is the core group of characters that help connect the dots of the rapidly evolving socio-economic order illustrating the changes that emerge in the clash between the old vs new money. Something that the Rothschilds are probably familiar with — The Rothschild Taste ( NYRB, 25 June 2015)
Being the eldest daughter of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, Hannah Rothschild is privileged to have witnessed firsthand the manner in which British artisocracy functions. There are moments in the novel that can only have come from experience and not imagination but are so discreetly woven into the story that it could easily pass off as created dialogue. What makes this novel astoundingly remarkable is the cleverness with which Hannah Rothschild has shown the economic usefulness of women along with their keen ability to survive irrespective of circumstances. It is trait that seems to exist across socio-economic groups; the women do not seem to be burdened by an sense of entitlement and inherited prejudices. They just get on doing what they must. The women mirror much of the men in the story as in the women too represent three different generations and old vs new money but the distinctive feature about the women is that they are far more flexible in their wants and generous in their spend.
21 March 2020
*Note: It has been quite a task writing this review. It has taken much, much longer than expected. More than a week. A week that has eerily coincided with the global markets being horrendously volatile in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. This novel too is set at the time of the market crash of 2008 and the Sars epidemic! Uncanny parallels!
The Cartiers: The Untold Story of a Jewellery Dynasty by Francesca Cartier Brickell is a family history penned by the great-great-great granddaughter of the iconic jewellery firm’s founder. The Cartiers took Francesca more than a decade of research. It all began when the family gathered to celebrate her grandfather’s ninetieth birthday. Over the years he would often refer to a pile of family correspondence that seemed to have gone missing. At his ninetieth birthday celebrations Francesca went to the cellar to locate the bottle of wine he sought and to her joy stumbled upon a chest. She pried it open to discover it stuffed with letters. She decided to chronicle the family as her grandfather was the last who had actually worked in one of the firm’s branches before it was sold in 1974. She was working as a financial analyst covering the retail sector and raising a young family in London which meant that Francesca had to travel every weekend to south France to be with her grandfather to record his accounts. The result is this fascinating chronicle of a remarkable family that through its determined ambition to rise through the socio-economic ranks of French society got exactly what they wanted. From an impoverished background in the early nineteenth century to being welcomed in the courts of many prominent royal families across the world and counting amongst their clients professionals such as bankers, actors, musicians, politicians etc. Astonishingly this ambition and drive was evident across generations. With a steely determination the family knew what they desired — luxury retail, upmarket clientele, elegant and diverse product range and ensconced in the middle class. The family was clear that they had to remain clear of debt, they had to innovate and be creative and not necessarily always look at their competitors but look around for inspiration and ideas.
Alfred Cartier, grandon of the founder, with sons Louis, Pierre and Jacques
While every generation of the Cartiers had contributed constructively to the establishment of the family as a name to contend with in the jewellery business, it was the fourth generation of three brothers — Louis-Joseph, Pierre Camille and Jacques-Thoedule ( the author’s great-grandfather), who truly made the jewellery firm a name to reckon with. A name that is recognised decades later. Designs created by them continue to be recognised and attract astronomical prices at auctions as evident in the Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence — spanning five centuries — auction organised by Christies, June 2019. Museum quality jewels belonging to Sheikh Hamad Al Thani with 388 lots were up for sale. Another equally successful and prominent white glove sale, consisting predominantly of Cartier designed jewellery, was the sale of the Duchess of Windsor’s jewellery in 2010.
…there were twenty-one Cartier pieces in the sale. Eight of them reached over one million dollars. One exceeded ten million dollars. In total, the number of Cartier lots accounted for just 5 percent of the overall number but ended up contributing a quarter of the final $109 million value.
“Cartier” is synonymous with luxury, fine living and power. The jewellery designed by the firm drips with elegance, power and money. It is meant for the rich. The Cartier gemstones belong to the privileged sections of society. But that does not prevent millions of others from appreciating fine craftsmanship, the stunning arrangement of gem stones especially diamonds, and the play of colours as in the Tutti-Frutti range. The benchmark set by the Cartiers for quality of work, excellence, discretion in dealing with clientele and managing the brand globally is astounding as it spans a couple of centuries. Their hallmark is to create stunning designs that wow their customers for their uniqueness. This is primarily due to the Cartier family’s keeness to experiment and look for inspiration elsewhere rather than at their competitors. These decisions helped create an iconic brand whose designs astound the world decades later. A testament to this fact have been the aforementioned auctions of December 2010 and June 2019 where the Cartier jewels were the key attraction.
The Cartiers were responsible for many innovations in their jewellery designs, many of which were a response to the times, but have withstood the test of time. For instance, the Tank watch. Louise Cartier created this watch for pilot Santos-Dumont inspired by the Renault FT-17 light tank, a mechanical hero of the Great War. Santos and Cartier were friends. Santos was an avid pilot who had begun to find it difficult to extricate his pocket watch from his clothes to check the time while in flight. He mentioned this in passing to Louise Cartier who took it on as a challenge to design something that would be convenient to wear, consult without compromising on its elegance. So far wrist watches had been designed for women with the emphasis more on the jewellery designed rather than the watch itself. So the perception in most people’s minds was that it was a feminine accessory. Louis Cartier designed an elegant unisex wrist watch where the only concession to it being designed by a jeweller was the plain sapphire winder on the right-hand side. The simple, functional, elegant lines of the Tank watch made it iconic from the word go, not least because Santos flaunted it everywhere he went. Given that Santos was a style guru of his times, Louis Cartier could not have wished for a better launch pad for a new product. Although an entire range of Cartier Santos wrist watches was released only after some years. Much later Andy Warhol owned one but not for its intended purpose. “I don’t wear a Tank to tell the time,” said the man who invented the concept of 15 minutes of fame. “In fact, I never wind it. I wear a Tank because it’s the watch to wear.” Platinum versions of some of the earliest versions of the watch are collector’s items. Here is a lovely 2017 Forbes article celebrating the Tank watch’s centenary.
The first Tank watch designed by Louis Cartier for Santos-Dumont
Rudolf Valentino insisted on wearing his Tank watch in the film”Son of the Sheik” (1928). This was the first appearance of the Tank watch on screen.
Product diversification was a key to Cartier’s success. The family was keen to capitalise on fashionable trends while keeping an eye on marketable commodities without compromising on style, elegance and being recognised as a luxury brand. In order to create new designs and become the leading tastemakers in the market, the three Cartier brothers — Louis, Pierre and Jacques — began to search for alternatives. While the Tank watch is a great example of seeking inspiration from key industrial products of the age; there were other such experiments too. Such as the Cartiers were the first ones to introduce the use of platinum for setting gemstones. Fairly early on they had discovered that the metal is the most ductile of pure metals but less malleable than gold, so a perfect choice to make fine jewellery. The inspiration for using this metal came from their observation of rail carriages where the metal was often employed. It was imperative to focus on creating a range of products for various reasons. Such as the onset of war and affordability of new designs, a surge in demand to remount heritage pieces of jewellery in more modern styles, using bejewelled accessories for different social occasions and not necessarily always extravagantly set pieces. ( Here is an article on the Cartier exhibition of 2018 which showcased more than 300 pieces, many on loan from royal families and private collections.)
Art Deco Diamond Necklace, Cartier (1929) Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco’s engagement ring, diamond set in platinum, Cartier Paris (1956)
Using platinum in their designs enabled the Cartier brothers to experiment with fine jewellery. They created tiaras, rings, fabulous necklaces, brooches, hair pins etc. This was a brand new idea in jewellery design. So much so that when they began using it to set gem stones, this unusual use of the metal had not as yet been recognised in this manner ensuring that it did not attract any tax and helped reduce the cost of jewellery being created.
The versatility of the metal helped the wildly imaginative Louis Cartier to sketch extraordinary designs, using a range of gem stones, to create opulent pieces of jewellery, raising the bling factor by many degrees. He also was deeply influenced by the Art Deco movement. He was ably assisted in fulfiling his dreams of creating iconic pieces of jewellery when he hired Charles Jacqueau.While out taking a stroll Louis Cartier had spotted an exceptionally beautiful balcony being installed. Impressed by its avant-garde geometric style and sense of proportion, Louis spotted the young designer on a ladder supervising its installation. He immediately requested Charles Jacqueau to come for an interview to his firm but Louis Cartier’s offer was firmly rejected by the young man as he was already committed to projects. Once done, Jacqueau visited Louis Cartier who set him a test of designing jewellery with three piles of gems — rubies, sapphires and diamonds. Jacqueau excelled in the text. Cartier was delighted his instinct had proved correct and offered the young man a job on the spot. Jacqueau had trained at Paris’s famous art school, the École des Arts Décoratifs. His professional expertise was in large metal structures, not in tiny gems. But he accepted the assignment at Cartiers as he was intrigued by this new type of work.
Charles Jacqueau
It suited both employer and employee to be creatively energised for these were exciting times to be in Paris. The Art Deco movement was in vogue. Also in news were fascinating archaeological expeditions such as Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon’s of 1923 where they discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb. The Cartier brothers were inspired to create a new range. They would scour antique shops for remnants of ancient Egyptian art. Some dating hundreds of years back. Then these would be incorporated in new settings while being mindful of the original beauty of the Egyptian art. Simple but classic style statements were created such as hair clips, belt buckles, bracelets, brooches etc. Art Deco Egyptian revival jewellery was soon the rage. Today these creations are collector’s items as few were sold and remain in private collections, very rarely are they made available for auction. Many others remain in the Cartier collection. According to a 2015 Vanity Fair article:
… almost a century later, this refined mash-up, known as art deco Egyptian Revival jewelry, is among the most unique, and most highly-coveted in the modern market—and is priced to match. Many are considered masterpieces of the jewelry canon, but few land beneath the glass at the Met or even smaller museums. Instead, Egyptian Revival pieces are often purchased by private collectors with massive budgets and highly developed tastes.
Egyptian-inspired jewels illustrated in a Cartier advertisement, in the Illustrated London News, 26th January 1924, showing “The Tutankhamen Influence in Modern Jewelry.” The copy below the illustration which gives descriptions of the pieces and their faience antiquities, (incorrectly describing the fragment in the fan brooch as a sacred ram) says “Women interested in Egyptology, who desire to be in the Tutankhamen fashion, can now wear real ancient gems in modern settings as personal ornaments.”Lady Abdy’s rare Egyptian-Revival Faience and Jeweled Brooch, Cartier, London. A glazed faience centerpiece, dated to New Kingdom, 1540-1075 BC, set upside down, and is framed in gemstones.A sketch of the scarab belt buckle brooch worn by Linda Porter, Cole Porter’s wife. (1926).
Another innovative introduction in contemporary jewellery design was to make the pearl string an attractively elegant accessory. Most often than not the Cartiers excelled in using natural pearls, exquisitely graded and strung so beautifully. From a single strand to multiple strings on one necklace became a fasion statement that has once again survived decades of stylish dressing. Jackie Kennedy Onassis was known for her pearl strings. Equally well-known were the more extravagantly strung 10-string creation made for the Maharajah of Patiala.
The Patiala Necklace created by Cartier in 1928 for Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, was some of the priciest jewellery ever commissioned. It contained 5 rows of Art Deco Chains all completely covered in 1000 carats of ice, 2930 diamonds; contained the 7th largest diamond – a 234 carat De Beers rock! It took 3 years to make but mysteriously disappeared in 1948 and was recovered 50 years later with some of its stones missing, including the Burmese rubies and the massive De Beers diamond.
The Cartiers had a long and lucrative association with some of the notable royal families around the world. Some of their best clients were the Romanov dynasty before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and many of the Indian royal families. The Russian market was not easy to cultivate but once done the Cartiers were steadily commissioned to create new pieces of jewellery. Even after the collapse of the dynasty, many of the Russian nobles who fled the country, made their way to Europe clutching bags of jewels. These were then either sold as is or some pieces were remounted in new designs by jewellers such as the Cartiers. A classic example being the Romanov emeralds worn by the Grand Duchess Vladimir and later acquired by Edith McCormack Rockefeller and Barbara Hutton — in that order. Each time the deal was brokered by Cartier and the gems remounted as per the wishes of the client.
The Grand Duchess Vladimir wearing her emeralds for the great Court ball of 1903. Note there are nine emeralds. The emeralds as set by Cartier into the Art Deco sautoir bought by Edith McCormack RockefellerThe emeralds as set by Cartier into American heiress Barbara Hutton’s Indian-style tiara. Note there are now only seven stones.
Their association with the Indian royal families influenced the Cartier range of jewellery too. It brought in a profusion of colours which was unheard of in European fashion circles. A burst of colours on a string or a bracelet much akin to Indian kitsch looked good when used with brightly coloured real gems such as sapphires, rubies and emeralds. This range began to be called Tutti-Frutti or the cringeworthy term “Hindou” jewellery, coined by Jacques Cartier. “Tutti-Frutti” as a description of the jewels began to be used only in 1970 despite the first pieces of jewellery being commisioned by Queen Alexandra in 1901 to match three of her Indian gowns.
Daisy Fellowes, the Singer heiress, wearing her Tutti Frutti necklace, commissioned in 1936, using many of her own gems. Fellowes daughter Castéja inherited the spectacular necklace. In 1991, five years after the death of Casteja, the necklace along with a pair of carved emerald and diamond earrings, came up for sale with an estimate of $650,000— $950,000. When the hammer came down at the Sotheby’s Geneva auction, a new record was set for an Art Deco jewel. The final price was $2,655,172. Countess Edwina Mountbatten, the last Vicerine of India, owned a Tutti Frutti tiara, made by Cartier in England in 1928. When the piece was sold in 2004, The British government placed an export ban on it because the tiara is so significant in the history of British jewellery making
The Cartiers: The Untold Story of a Jewellery Dynasty by Francesca Cartier Brickell is an absorbing account of a family that really carved a niche for itself. The family name became a strong brand unto itself. The generations of men in control of the firm were innovative and creative ensuring that their pathbreaking designs wowed contemporaries but have also withstood the test of time and continue to attract astonishing prices. What is truly mesmerising to read is how every single generation was very focused, determined and ambitious to develop the brand and in order to do so they recognised the need to be prudent in their business plans. For instance when their local partner in Russia was insistent that they set up a standalone store, the Cartiers refused recognising that the investment costs outweighed the profitability of such a venture. Similarly when a brother travelled to the Indian subcontinent to source gems and sell some of their recent creations, the other brothers wanted to be kept abreast of all details, with a keen eye on the profit margins made. Much of these conversations are detailed in the correspondence discovered in the trunk found in the cellar. All these tiny dots in the family’s past are connected well in the able hands of Francesca Cartier Brickell who in all likelihood has brought in her professional expertise as a retail sector financial analyst to understand the Cartiers. It certainly shows in the competent arrangement of the narrative.
The layout of the book is interesting. Peppered throughout the book are boxed extracts from the conversations Francesca had with her grandfather. They help in not only breaking up the monotony of the text-heavy book but also make much of the history “accessible” for these snippets of testimonies by a gentleman who witnessed many of the events documents. Or he recalled family anecdotes that supported many of the facts Francesca unearthed during the course of her research.
Curiously though Francesca Cartier Brickell while being intent on keeping her family’s image intact is unable to bring a modern distancing from the facts shared. While it is understandable that the Russians were amongst the best clients the Cartiers had but to be dismissive of the assassination of “the prime minister ( and Cartier’s good client), Pyotr Stolypin” by a “leftist revolutionary” is just one of many examples in the book where a more nuanced understanding of the socio-historical events in this family history would have been welcome. Another example is consistently referring to the “Hindou” jewellery despite it being factually incorrect as not all the Indian royals were Hindus apart from which it is an uncomfortable term in present times; a simple recognition of which would have been a gracious gesture. While these are tiny editorial details that perhaps were in the author’s control there are some other elements in the book production that do not seem to have been in her purview. It is almost as if many corners were cut to keep the price point of the book “affordable” than take into account the history of an iconic luxury brand which demanded to be heavily illustrated as well. There are innumerable photographs throughout the book. Most of them are in black and white. Unfortunately most of them are shoddy reproductions making it impossible to discern the beauty of the jewellery. For instance on p. 360 there is an image of a group of women wearing tiaras but it impossible to appreciate the beauty of the jeweller’s craftsmanship. There are many examples such as this in the book. Even the two sections of tipped in colour plates are frustrating to read as the provenance of the jewels is not mentioned except in fine print towards the end of the book; making it extremely difficult to consult. Or there are many situations where the text refers to a piece of jewellery but is not pictorially referenced in the text. This makes reading the book a very slow and laborious process for one has to constantly search the Internet to search for references to the jewels mentioned. Perhaps it is symptomatic of the new age of reading — a blend of the print and digital experiences but it is also tantamount to lazy book production by compromising on the quality of such a potentially fine book. It is upsetting too since this is an account of a family that is synonymous with elegance and sophistication but the book production does the Cartiers a disservice for its clumsiness. A tiny detail such as a red silk ribbon inserted as a bookmark custom monogrammed with the Cartier signature would have added a subtly elegant detail.
Be that as it may, except for these tiny hiccups, The Cartiers is an absorbing read. Many will enjoy reading it. There is much to be learned from it.
…it was during a period he had so much time on his hands that he felt that time had stopped.
How could time have stopped?
‘Because,’ he said, ‘and you will understand this when you are older, sometimes you feel that everything around you has come to an end.You feel that you are completely alone, that time is frozen and that you are invisible. At first, you might feel exhilarated by the sense of freedom, but then you’ll be frightened that you are lost and you will never be able to go back.’
He explained that when he first felt this, he had been isolated and afraid and had prised open his watch case to verify that time was indeed passing. The rhythm of the watch might have been imagined. Sound was notenough, he needed to see and touch it. It was the first time that he had dismantled a mechanism. The turning wheels, ticking each second away, had reassured him.
It was then that he had comprehended the importance of time.
Ariana Neumann was raised in Caracas, Venezuela as a Catholic. Her father, Hans Neumann was an established businessman who was also seen as a patron of the arts. Ariana was Hans’ daughter by his second wife. Ariana had a fairytale upbringing. Living in a large home, stuffed with beautiful pieces of art. She had loving parents and had everything that she desired. It is evident in the book trailer which is based on a series of home movies.
Ariana Neumann’s debut book When Time Stopped is a memoir about uncovering the truth about her father’s past. Despite the idyllic childhood he gave her, there were certain topics that were taboo. One of these were questions about his past. It was during a “spying” game that nine-year-old Ariana had created with her friends that one of her friends/spies reported that they had witnessed her father carrying a cardboard box into the library. Later in the day she decided to investigate for herself. Ariana found the box. Ruffled through its contents. Found it contained only a slim collection of papers. Most written in a language she could not comprehend. Then she spotted an identification document with an unrecognisable name — Jan Sebesta– and a young man’s photograph, an unmistakable likeness to Hans, and stamped below it was also a picture of Hitler. She was startled. She ran to her mother distraught at her discovery. Her mother placated Ariana and told her not to worry. Yet it shook Arian’s world realising that her father was not who he was. After that the box disappeared. She never saw it again. Until her father passed away and she was clearing his drawers. She then discovered the box once more. This time it was stuffed with more papers, mostly in languages she could not read. Equally puzzling were the nightmares her father had when he would scream aloud in a language Ariana could not understand.
Berlin identity card dated October 1943 found by Ariana Neumann as a girl. It had a photo of her father Hans Neumann as a young man on it, but the name stated was Jan Šebesta.
When Time Stopped is a memoir that reads like a well told mystery story as Ariana uncovers the truth about her father. A beloved father who was exceedingly busy and built an extraordinary business empire established first in the paint industry. A father who was so immersed in his work that even his own daughter had to seek an appointment with his secretary in order to have some time alone with him. A father who threw himself into his work that he was effectively able to compartmentalise his life and seemingly not let anything deter him. It was this father whom she had persuaded to visit Prague as part of a business delegation in the early 1990s. She had accompanied him. At the time he had let his mask slip briefly when broke down at the fence of Bubny station.
Hans Neumann’s deportation ticket. He absconded and did not show up at Bubny station in Prague as ordered.
When Time Stops is a fascinating account of how Ariana uncovers her father’s past, discovers he was a Holocaust survivor, who had lost twenty-five members of his family in the pogrom conducted by the Nazis. He had managed to escape by extraordinarily living in Berlin, under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, as a Christian. He was convinced that “the darkest shadow lies beneath the candle”. From there he fled to Venezuela with his older brother. Unfortunately his parents and extended relatives perished in the gas chambers. The Neumann’s had a thriving painting business in Prague. They were Czech Jews whose lives had been upturned with the invasion of the Germans in March 1939.
While researching for this book, Ariana Neuman discovered that she had relatives spread acrosss the world. She contacted them. Also discovered that there was a list of Jews who had perished during the war posted on the walls of a synagogue in Prague. She found her father’s name that had a question mark against his death. When she called and asked him about it, he merely said, “I tricked them”. Ariana also discovers that her paternal grandparents had been sent to a concentration camp that ordinarily operated as a labour camp so rules governing its administration were relatively “freer” than the other camps. Hence her grandparents while being incarcerated inside were able to send letters and parcels to their sons and at times receive illicit parcels containing packets of food and bare essentials. Extraordinarily it is the emergence of these letters after more seventy years that for the first time reveals to many the manner in which these camps operated. They had a well-defined economy and administrative structure. Ariana’s grandparents letter shed light on these internal mechanisms as well as some of the despicable horrors, many of which they were unable to recount, yet alluded to them. Ariana stumbled upon these parcels while investigating into her past. As she reached out to newly found relatives she discovered that they had similar boxes of papers as she had. These contained letters and pictures. Using the services of a Czech translator, Ariana painstakingly translated and read all the correspondence. Then filled in the gaps with her research. Result is this book. This extraordinary memoir.
When Time Stops is about Ariana discovering that the stray remarks fellow students made at school and university questioning her Catholic upbringing and at times bluntly saying she was a Jew were all true. They knew. She did not. It is more than just the passionate love of her father’s for his 297 clocks that he so carefully cared for. He had his own workshop in a windowless room where he tinkered with his precious watches, some of them going back a few hundred years. Yet of all the beautiful pieces he owned, it was an ordinary dull gold one that he was most fond of as it reminded him of the time piece his own father possessed. A link that the daughter put together after her decades of investigation into her past.
While being an fascinating account of a life, When Time Stops is also a horrifying read for the many parallels it has with modern life. Many countries today are questioning the citizenship of their people and creating scenarios that are eerily similar to those described in this book. It is worth reflecting upon. How much of the past needs to be shared and kept alive through memories as a lesson to future generations on the horrors that humans can inflict upon their own? How much of the past that is kept alive is actually used by future perpetrators as case studies? It is a tricky balance to achieve in this grey and gloomy world. Having said that When Time Stopped is worth reading for it stands out as a very well written memoir, balancing extensive research with the personal stories.
*The pictures used in this blog post have been published in the book and on The Israel Times website.
A man without rights in this world is still entitled to love.
Award-winning author Aravind Adiga’s Amnesty is set in Sydney, Australia. It tells the story of an illegal immigrant, Dhananjaya Rajaratnam aka “Danny”, who came on a student visa four years earlier but stayed on. Now he earns a living as a cleaner. The action of the novel takes place in less than a day after he realises that one of his former clients, Radha Thomas, has been murdered in her apartment. He is in a pother wondering what to do. He had been on pretty good terms with Radha and knew her secrets quite well such as her long time affair with fellow-gambler, Dr. Prakash. In fact Danny has often accompanied the two on their gambling sprees but only as a companion. Danny was not a gambler. He was also a teetotaller. Two facts about their Cleaner that mystified Radha and Prakash and yet they invited him along.
Amnesty is about Danny in a fix. He is an illegal immigrant in Australia. A fact that many, even his girlfriend, are clueless about. But Danny has learned to survive in Sydney. His predicament on the day Radha Thomas is murdered stems from his quandary about telling the police about Radha and Prakash and coming to terms with the inevitable repurcussions of revealing his presence in the country. It is a horrendous situation to be in as he left Sri Lanka for better pastures given the civil strife. He is also ridden with guilt as his father had managed to collect the handsome sum of over $11,000 Australian dollars to pay for Danny’s education except that Danny chose to stay on as an illegal immigrant. There is so much rushing through Danny’s mind while living in the present. Having occupied this grey area of Australian society where he is visible and yet invisible enables him to observe much more than he lets on or will ever tell. As an immigrant of South Asian origin he is able to witness the incredibly well-defined social structures of society where the whites dominate and is evident in the layout of Sydney’s neighbourhoods. Given his profession as a cleaner, Danny is able to flit in and out of homes, even in the poshest neighbourhoods, and gets a sense of how much variation there is in the quality of living amongst different sections of society. It also fuels his aspirations of being a legal permanent Australian resident rather than return to Sri Lanka. The very thought of returning home is a depressing thought.
In Amnesty the first person narrative is delivered most often as short monologues. At first it is a fascinating literary technique to employ as it helps plunge the reader immediately into a very personal space — Danny’s mind. But with every passing minute it begins to rattle the reader as this flood of memories intermingled with the rapidly unfurling events of the day, is a heady emotional cocktail for it is relentless, unnerving, disconcerting and suffocating. It is as if Danny has neatly co-opted the reader into his quandary. It is disturbing for this is a situation unique to Danny and Danny alone. Unlike with literary fiction where much of the reading experience is completed by the reader’s engagement with the story, here it is a terrifying space to inhabit where the reader is privy to Danny’s every thought and action. Helpless in being unable to guide Danny is an unpleasant prospect for the reader but it is nothing compared to what Danny is undergoing where his internal moral compass strongly suggests he needs to reveal all that he knows to the police but it will inevitably mean deportation to him. It is this fickleness of life and to a certain degree what he construes as unfair that keeps him unsure about how to proceed. Amnesty stems from the Greek word, Amnesia, which is also a play on Danny’s convenient forgetfulness about the visa he used to enter Australia. Yet this one day is critical in his life for it unravels his grit and determination to stay on in the country as he battles his inner self for figuring out what is the right thing to do — share the information he has about the crime committed or not. Ironically it is an amnesty he strikes with himself before taking the decision he makes.
In a sense Amnesty can be construed as a literary recreation of the Stockholm Syndrome which is a psychological response of the captive to align with their captor during captivity. Danny is the illegal immigrant who fears deportation to Batticaloa, the distress in the homeland in his mind is far worse than skulking as a persona non grata in Sydney. The “captivity” of being an illegal alien in a foreign land is infinitely preferable to home. In fact Danny is constantly assessing people by their legal right to live in this city. But he is gripped with worry when confronted with the murder of Radha Thomas. And the drama plays out slowly like a Greek tragedy in the classical one day cycle to figure out what Danny will do. It is very much a modern novel with its global theme of the status of migrants. Literature is able to say much more bluntly that journalists are unable to do or are choosing not to do. Fiction is able to take deep dives into the personal and give a face to the tragedy. Migration stories in journalism present a story that can then be used to influence or change government policies. Literature like Adiga’s Amnesty, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West keep such uncomfortable conversations alive. They are relevant. They are also an assertion by the South Asian diaspora to use their position in the global literary landscape to be heard.
Adiga seems to subvert the Australian literary fiction canon which is very focussed upon its preoccupations by preferring to show the subaltern’s view of Sydney society — a perspective that is Adiga’s literary trademark. In this case, it is the perspective of the South Asian immigrant trying to find a foothold in Australian society while navigating all the tricky socio-economic spaces. Adiga gives a voice to the minority that is not easily visible in mainstream Australian literature; not to say that literature by the diaspora is not making waves in Australia. It is. There are moments in the novel that may alienate the reader for its minute description of Sydney’s streets. Detailing the local landscape does make the head spin but it also helps in aligning oneself with the confusion that must be prevailing in Danny’s mind. Definitely not easy to read but by having a writer of Adiga’s calibre and literary clout speak of these daily preoccupations in his latest novel will most certainly impact contemporary Australian literature. Wait and see.
Ann Cleeves is known for her mystery novels mostly set in Devon and the Shetlands. She has been writing for many years but the recent success of her Shetland novels adapted for TV by the BBC has sparked a renewed interest in her books. It has definitely got her a new fan base.
Ann Cleeves at Jaipur Literature Festival 2020
On 26 October 2017, Ann Cleeves was presented with the Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association, the highest honour in British crime writing, at the CWA’s Dagger Awards ceremony in London. In 2006 Ann was the first winner of the Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of the year, for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland series. In addition, she has been short listed for CWA Dagger Awards, once for the short story dagger, and twice for the Dagger in the Library award which is awarded not for an individual book but for an author’s entire body of work.
Her new novel, The Long Call, features a new detective, Matthew Venn. It is set in North Devon where Ann Cleeves grew up. Detective Inspector Matthew Venn is a reserved and complex person, estranged from the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, and from his own family, but drawn back by murder into the community he thought he had left behind. The Long Call seems very contemporary in its writing style, the scenarios presented, the flexibility in character movement, the plot lines etc. There are all the classic elements of a mystery novel keeping the reader in suspense but the modern touches to the storytelling are refreshing too. For instance the vulnerability of Matthew Venn in his personal space is very well done. Juxtaposed with the toxic masculinity he has to contend with while working on a case is fascinating to read. Although it is hard to pinpoint a specific point in the novel but it feels almost as if the recent years of having had many of her previous novels adapted for television has affected Cleeves writing style — although she denies it to be so in the interview below. Be that as it may, the story is fabulous. Read it.
Here is an interview conducted via email:
What drew you to writing mystery stories? Do you prefer writing novels or short stories? And as a reader which form do you prefer?
Although I’ve always read very
widely, mysteries were my comfort books, the books I turned to when I had a
cold or was miserable. I planned to write a great work of literary
fiction when I started out, but the novel only really took off when I killed
off one of the characters! I find the structure of the classic detective
story rather liberating, and it still allows me to explore the topics which
interest me: the family, social justice and the way that place influences the
individual.
Short stories are very difficult to write. Every word has to count. I can experiment with short fiction, write from the first person, for example, which isn’t a natural voice for me. I prefer reading novels; it’s a more immersive experience.
2. How long does it take you to write a novel? Does a series arc require extensive planning or do you let it evolve over time?
I’m contracted to do a book a year, but the book usually takes about nine months to complete. I don’t plan my work at all. I write like a reader, I think. I can’t start until I have an idea about the world I’m creating, a vague sense of what it would be like to live there, but the details, even the details of character, come with the writing. So, I’ll write the first scene and because I want to know what happens next, I write the second. By the time I’m halfway through, I have a notion about what the resolution will be, but even then I’m not quite sure how I’ll get there.
3. How did you get your first break in publishing?
It was a lot easier to find a publisher when I started out in the late nineteen eighties. I wrote my book, went to my local library to see who published the kind of novel I’d written, then sent letters and synopses to them. The fourth publisher I tried accepted it. It was much harder getting any commercial success. That took twenty years.
4. The “Dear Reader” format is fascinating. It is a direct acknowledgement of how aware you are aware of the reader. How does this constant awareness of the reader affect your writing style?
I wrote a letter to my readers at the beginning of The Long Call because it was the first book in a new series and I hoped to persuade the people who’d enjoyed the Vera and Shetland books to give it a try. When I’m writing I’m not really aware of the reader at all. It’s a very selfish process. I write the book that I’d enjoy reading, I’m revelling in the process, in becoming my characters and seeing the world through their eyes. It’s a sophisticated form of a child playing make-believe. There’s nothing wrong with escapist fiction, either as a reader or a writer.
5. How do you create characters? Do they evolve once the plot develops as well or do you first create people sketches and then work them in to the plot?
I don’t create people sketches. Of course I know my returning characters rather well – I’m writing them from memory not imagination – but the individuals who only appear in one book grow as I’m writing. Then of course I have to go back and make sure that they’re consistent from the beginning.
6. Does the gender of a character make a difference to the degree of insight and work required on your part as an author? (I get the sense that your women characters are far more nuanced than the male characters. Not to say the male characters are not well portrayed but there are tiny details about the women that makes them to be more rounded. It is almost as if at times you are sympathising with them.)
This is a really interesting observation! I hadn’t thought the gender made any difference, but perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m rooting for my women and have more understanding of their problems and stresses. It doesn’t feel any easier when I’m writing them though.
7. Do you like observing people?
Yes! I’m perpetually eavesdropping and watching. I don’t know how you could be a writer if you don’t use public transport, for example. That’s such fertile ground for observation.
8. Have the recently successful TV adaptations of your books, especially The Shetland series, affected your writing style?
I don’t think so. The more recent Shetland TV series – they’re about to film series 6 – have moved away from the books. They retain the atmosphere and the sense of place, but perhaps they’re darker, a little more Gothic in tone. But the theme of kindness, which I hope is at the heart of the novels, is still very much there. The double Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn plays the central character in Vera and we’ve already had ten seasons of those shows. She absolutely captures my character and I do hear her voice in my head when I’m writing dialogue.
9. Where do you find the inspiration of your stories especially the intricacies of the mystery?
The mystery and the plot twists seem to take care of themselves. Deciding the essence of the book is the most important thing for me. For example, I think The Long Call is about powerful men deciding that they’re entitled to cover up a crime. And in the end the cover up is more toxic than the crime itself.
10. To create the settings of your novels, do you visit the places beforehand to get a sense of the geography and its locals or does it involve a lot of armchair research or a bit of both? I ask because at times it seems almost as if the descriptions are written down as if you had observed them yourself.
I can only write about place that I know well. I have been visiting Shetland for more than forty years and lived there for a while. I grew up in North Devon and still have friends there and I live in Northumberland where the Vera books are set. My daughter is an academic, a human geographer, and I think that’s what I do: explore community and the individual’s place within it.
11. What is your writing routine?
I write best early in the morning, at a laptop on my kitchen table, drinking lots of tea.
12. Who are the writers who have influenced your writing?
When I was younger I read all the Golden Age mystery writers – Christie, Sayers, Allingham – but my real reading passion now is crime fiction in translation. I think we get a real sense of another culture’s preoccupations by reading their popular fiction. I’m especially a fan of Simenon’s Maigret books. They’re so tight and precisely observed.
