- 2 hours ago
Acclaimed writers Tash Aw, Kiran Desai, Esther Freud and Richard Flanagan explore how fiction is imagined, crafted, and made believable, in conversation with Anuradha Roy at Jaipur Literature Festival 2026.
#JaipurLiteratureFestival #JLF2026 #WritingFiction #NovelWriting #LiteraryConversation #AuthorsInConversation #CreativeWriting #BookLovers #LiteraryCraft
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#JaipurLiteratureFestival #JLF2026 #WritingFiction #NovelWriting #LiteraryConversation #AuthorsInConversation #CreativeWriting #BookLovers #LiteraryCraft
~HT.178~
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NewsTranscript
00:00It's wonderful to see you all. Thank you for coming, especially since the time for this session has been changed, so I'm sure that inconvenienced some of you, but we've got this absolutely dazzling palette of fiction writers to tell us where does fiction come from, which I'm not sure I can answer.
00:24I don't think it's a question that can ultimately be answered, so I'll listen to them. I hope they have more answers than me. Fortunately, I'm not the one doing the answering this time.
00:38I'd like to talk to each of them a little bit about their latest books, and then we'll take it from there and talk about inspirations, research, architecture, whatever interests the writers who are on stage.
00:57Can I start with you, Esther?
00:59Of course.
01:02Your new book is My Sister and Other Lovers, and I remember reading ages ago your first book, Hideous Kiki, and in both these books you draw greatly on your own life, which you're very, you know, it's not something you try to hide.
01:21You've spoken about it, and you've talked about how heartbreak can be repurposed to art, and how writing about your family is often like throwing a bomb into the house.
01:36Would you talk about turning personal life into material?
01:40Yes, it's interesting.
01:41I was being interviewed about this new book, which is quite, I have drawn a lot from my own life, as you said.
01:48But also my first book, I've written many other novels which haven't drawn so closely, but I wasn't sure, with this book for the first time in my writing life of 30-odd years, I wasn't sure what story I needed to tell, which comes to your question, where does fiction come from?
02:05Sometimes you don't know.
02:07You need to write, but you don't seem to know where it's coming from, but you know it's inside somewhere.
02:12And for me, the answer isn't really to stop and think and have a break, as sometimes people suggest.
02:18I just kept writing, and eventually it evolved into this book, which I did need to write.
02:25Throwing the bomb for lots of writers, I'm sure there are many writers in this room, I've always been quite a sort of peaceable person, especially in my family.
02:34I'm probably the one who gets on best with everybody.
02:37I make that important to me.
02:39But when it comes to being a writer, the famous shard of splinter of glass is quite sharp inside, and I find that I'd do anything to make the book work, even if it means causing some anger towards me.
02:55I realize that I'm prepared to do that, because it's so important to me that the book is as powerful as it can be in its ability to communicate a story that I need to tell.
03:07So I'm always surprised, I'm sitting there thinking, I didn't even recognize myself, but here I am, I'm just going to write it, maybe I'll edit it later.
03:15But if it's good, it has to stay in.
03:20Percival Everett is joining us on Zoom.
03:23Thank you, Percival, it must be an unearthly hour for you.
03:29No, it's fine.
03:30I apologize for not being there in person.
03:34Well, Percival, your book is about a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave.
03:42And what I found absolutely fascinating in that was the role of the pencil, because language is at the center of the book, and how language is, there's a kind of private language and a public language, and it's both for rebellion and oppression and subversion.
04:02Would you talk about that?
04:03But I'm particularly interested, because in India, in the 19th century, too, women were not allowed to read and write either, as you say, of the slaves.
04:15Well, it's certainly true that any people who are oppressed or enslaved, imprisoned, find a way to talk to each other that does not allow entry of their enemy or their oppressors.
04:30I hesitate to use that word, because it suggests a level of victimhood that I don't recognize.
04:40So, it's a human thing to have a way to speak, and to speak the way your enemy expects you to speak, as a matter of survival.
04:55Okay.
04:57Well, can I move on to you, Richard?
05:00Question seven.
05:05I was really intrigued that quite a bit of the research that you did for Narrow Road to the Deep North forms the beginning of question seven.
05:16But what astonished me also in your book is the way there's a kind of historical novel embedded in it,
05:23and H.G. Wells more or less manifests the atom bomb.
05:27Would you like to talk about that?
05:30But also, while talking of fiction, I need to hear a story from you about an Italian TV show that you've once done.
05:39Yeah, I understand your editor spoke about it, and a story from Italy's escaped here to India.
05:45But many years ago, the last time I was asked this question was on an Italian TV show.
05:57I was doing an Italian book tour, and it was this high culture show that the Italians still do.
06:04And it was a half hour interview with this sort of Milanese spiv.
06:11He had this beautiful Italian fine wool suit, and I was brought into the studio in Rome at Rye, and there were lots of people.
06:23It was very Italian.
06:25Lots of people running around, and they raced down, and they put this earpiece in my ear and a little radio pack,
06:32and they told me how he would ask questions in Italian, and I would respond in English,
06:39and it was going to go out live across the Italian peninsula on a major channel.
06:45And I looked across to the host, who'd never acknowledged that I was there or said anything,
06:49and he was just sitting there in this beautiful suit, and he was just flicking lint off and straightening his creases.
06:58And he suddenly looked up, and he saw me, and he screamed, and he screamed and screamed,
07:06and everybody in the studio was electrified, and one of the technicians ran down and pulled the earpiece out of my ear
07:15and the radio packed from my waist, and then I looked around horrified,
07:20and I saw the floor manager doing that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and the monitors, everything started to roll,
07:27and some music came up, and the spiv in the beautiful Milanese wool suit started talking to me in Italian.
07:38And then he stopped.
07:40I'm going to start in Hindi now.
07:42Yeah, that's right.
07:44And so I looked through the glare of lights to my Italian publicist.
07:50For some reason, I had two Italian publicists that the publishers had allocated in a typically generous Italian gesture,
07:58and they just went like this.
08:00Talk.
08:02And so I started talking for what seemed an appropriate amount of time, and then I stopped.
08:07Then he spoke in Italian.
08:09Then I spoke in English.
08:11Then he spoke in Italian.
08:13And so we went for half an hour, and then it finished, and I hadn't understood a word he'd said.
08:21And then he, the credits rolled, and he came over, and he said it was one of the best interviews he'd ever done.
08:30And I realised that fiction comes from making up stories to answer questions you have no idea what they mean.
08:41In fact, you do say in your book that you quote Chekhov to say the rule of fiction is to ask questions and not to provide the answers.
08:59Yeah, Chekhov, he wrote that in a letter to, about Tolstoy's Anna Karina.
09:07And he said that it framed the questions correctly.
09:13And I think when novels succeed, they don't propose answers.
09:18Answers are the province of politics and religion and ideology.
09:23But a novel's job is to ask questions and reflect the chaos of life.
09:28So I, in this book, question seven, that's what I was seeking to do.
09:36You know, since we are talking about writers, Kiran, I was very, you have this magnificent scene in your book,
09:45The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, where the two main characters are going to meet.
09:53And you narrate this on a train, where they sort of pass each other.
09:58One of them is reading a book.
10:00And the other wants to see which book is she reading.
10:03And the book is one of my favourites, Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country.
10:09Would you talk about what made you pick that book?
10:11Yeah, you know, thank you.
10:15And I should also say that, you know, one of the reasons I have an alignment with your work
10:21is because I remember reading about how you loved Kawabata in some interview.
10:27So what can I say?
10:31Maybe writing comes from providing answers to questions you don't know about.
10:37Maybe writing comes from reading other writers and deeply, yeah, it comes from other books.
10:48And the scene of Sonia and Sunny first meeting is a reflection of the characters in Kawabata's Snow Country first meeting.
11:01And I was thinking about Kawabata's Snow Country and Kawabata in general
11:07because he was a Japanese writer, novelist, who was, I think he was educated in a Western novel,
11:15but he was a deeply Asian writer.
11:18And when he won the Nobel Prize, I think in the 1960s, he gave a speech,
11:24his Nobel speech, was about how his work was imbued with the ideas of Zen Buddhism and haiku
11:31and talked a lot about how he used reflections and metaphors to unsettle reality.
11:39And that was useful to me.
11:42When I was writing Sonia and Sunny, I began to think of how it would be to write a novel
11:48imbued with ideas that were not Western ideas, but Eastern ideas.
11:51Did you, Tash, I loved your book.
11:58I was just telling you the whole sort of, and we were just talking about how Tash's book,
12:04in which two teenagers fall intensely in love in the backdrop of a family farm going to ruin,
12:12how that is almost like the first book a writer would write rather than, you know, late in your career.
12:19And this is meant to be the first of a quartet.
12:24So I wanted to really understand how you build a quartet.
12:29Do you already know how you're going to go ahead?
12:32Does the reception of this book affect what you will write next?
12:36The answer is that I have a vague idea, but I'm not entirely sure of where it's going to go.
12:45I have an idea that we'll see the same members of a single family at different points in their lives,
12:52so maybe, say, at 10-year intervals.
12:53But the truth is I don't know if I can finish the quartet.
12:56But I'm going to have to because I've sold the books to my publisher and spent the money already.
13:04So I think I need to do them.
13:09But in terms of how, I think, you know, when you ask us where fiction comes from,
13:14I think the first thing I think of is a distinction between fiction and non-fiction.
13:18And the more I progress in my writing career, I think like a lot of people,
13:23I don't really believe in the distinction between fiction and non-fiction anymore.
13:27I still believe in the form of fiction and what it can do.
13:30But as we all know, a lot of fiction is inspired by how we react to the world,
13:36if not directly by our own lives and by our own families in particular.
13:40Because we always think that the writer is an individual being possessed of great genius.
13:45But in fact, they are always a product of the community, the society,
13:51and specifically the family that they grew up in.
13:54So this quartet is about a family that looks very much like mine,
13:57isn't exactly like mine, thank goodness.
14:01And the reason I started with a teenager's point of view is because
14:07I think when I was a teenager,
14:09I think there's a sense in which none of us ever gets over being a teenager.
14:14It's such a complicated time.
14:15We're not a child anymore.
14:16We're not an adult.
14:19And that time is so complex and so difficult when we're living in the moment.
14:24And it's only now that I'm much older that I can look back at that time
14:27and think about how beautiful it was and how terrifying
14:32and how it was so kind of complex.
14:35And it takes a long time for a writer to work out how someone feels.
14:41Is it actually a sort of phase of life?
14:46I wonder, Richard, reading your book,
14:50because you write so much about your childhood, your parents,
14:55in this book which is, as Dash said,
14:58you can't really separate out fiction and non-fiction anymore.
15:02So although it won a non-fiction, a big non-fiction prize,
15:07I really felt as if it was hard to pin down what it was.
15:11Well, there was big debates in different publishing houses
15:18whether it was non-fiction or a novel.
15:21And in fact, it won the major non-fiction prize in Britain,
15:25but then it was shortlisted for most of the novel prizes in France.
15:29So I think labels, as they say, are for jam jars.
15:34Yes, that's a good one.
15:38I'm not trying to be dissembling,
15:40but when I started writing, I knew a lot about writing,
15:46and the more I've written, the less I know.
15:48Yeah.
15:48And I simply...
15:54I did a gig in Los Angeles once
15:57with a famous American writer who must remain nameless,
16:01and they asked her first up how she wrote her books,
16:06and there's this idea that industry and hard work,
16:13you know, because people want to believe
16:15that art, books, things, that they come from toil.
16:21But...and there is some truth in that.
16:22But she talked for about 15 minutes
16:25about how she assembled databases,
16:27sent researchers out, did oral histories.
16:31I was utterly exhausted at about the eight-minute mark,
16:35just listening to it, and finally she ended.
16:38And there were about 2,000 earnest Californians,
16:41and they just couldn't applaud hard enough.
16:44But it had been a little tedious, if I am to be frank.
16:48And so then they threw to me,
16:52and they said, how do you write yours?
16:53And I said, well, I'm Australian, we're a bit lazy.
16:55I said, I get up in the morning,
16:57sit at the table and make it up.
16:59And the dreadful thing was,
17:02not one of those 2,000 earnest Californians laughed.
17:08It was a terrible silence gripped the hall.
17:10But I think there is a large element of play,
17:14and you're always trying to animate that.
17:17This morning, Jeff Dyer was talking about
17:19how you don't need to have a sense of humour
17:21if you're Californian.
17:22You were going to say something, Kiran.
17:29I can't remember what I was going to say,
17:31but I remember when I was teaching,
17:35I remember a student was a bit depressed
17:37because he had not won a prize,
17:39and he had not won a prize for autofiction.
17:42And I just said, what is autofiction?
17:45I mean, how does that differ from fiction?
17:47Because autofiction, nonfiction, fiction,
17:53I don't know how any of it can be separated.
17:57And I was recently reading Garcia Marquez's memoir,
18:02Living to Tell the Tale,
18:04which I think was supposed to be three volumes.
18:06It's one volume.
18:08And you read it,
18:09and you would never be able to tell,
18:12you know, it's a work of nonfiction,
18:14it's about his journalism,
18:17and he said journalism and fiction
18:18are two wings of the same bird.
18:20And you can just see where his fiction comes from,
18:23and it's just an extraordinary piece of autofiction, I guess.
18:27Although I'm sure he would burn that term.
18:30But, yeah, extraordinary piece of work.
18:32Do you call your fiction autofiction, Esther?
18:35I don't.
18:38I call it fiction,
18:39because that gives me so much freedom.
18:42I love fiction,
18:43and I have never written any memoir.
18:47And people, with my first novel,
18:48which was really a story based in my childhood,
18:51people asked me,
18:52why didn't you write a memoir?
18:53I was like, well, that would have been,
18:55that would have limited my ability.
18:57What happened when I couldn't remember?
18:59I was only five years old,
19:01whereas as it was,
19:02when I couldn't remember,
19:03I just closed my eyes and made it up,
19:06and I tried to keep the spirit of the story,
19:09which is, in a way, all you need is the spirit.
19:12But I'm interested in the autofiction question,
19:14because I feel that there's quite a lot
19:18of really wonderful autofiction writers,
19:20as they've been branded,
19:23maybe themselves or the publisher,
19:24which has actually given more respect
19:27to that kind of storytelling,
19:29which I feel has actually, as a result,
19:31given more respect to the kind of writing
19:33that I do,
19:34where I'm not pretending
19:35this is nothing to do with me.
19:38I've always been very open.
19:39Yes, I took this story out of my life,
19:41and I've embroidered it
19:43and made it into a story
19:44that's more universal.
19:45And sometimes people say,
19:46hmm, but some of it's true,
19:48as if that made it less powerful.
19:50But now, with autofiction,
19:51where it's been quite intellectualized,
19:53I feel there's a whole new profound respect
19:57from people like Annie Olu and Maggie Nelson.
20:01And I, so I really like it.
20:04And I'm happy for these people
20:05to be autofiction writers.
20:07And I find, I also really love these books,
20:10because I love it when people are honest
20:13and open about,
20:14this is actually something from my life.
20:15It's my favorite kind of writing.
20:18Just as an observation,
20:19it's really, it's strange
20:20that you mention the fact
20:23that Hideous Kinky was intended to be,
20:25you thought of it purely as fiction,
20:27because when I first read it,
20:28whenever it was,
20:29I first read it,
20:31it read to me completely like a memoir.
20:33Really, I felt that this was,
20:35there could be nothing truer than that.
20:37And I think you're right,
20:38in that we tend to think of literature
20:42in different forms,
20:44in different hierarchies.
20:45So you have the great fiction,
20:47which is attached to the great novel,
20:48the great European novel of the 19th century,
20:51and in its 20th century forms,
20:53attached to a lot of big Japanese novels,
20:54a lot of big Indian novels.
20:56And that is attributed,
20:58to that is attributed great gravitas
21:01and seriousness.
21:03Whereas writing about yourself,
21:05I think people still find embarrassing
21:07and slightly awkward and too easy.
21:10And I think that is not a useful distinction to have.
21:13I think those,
21:14I think it's really helpful
21:15that those distinctions are being broken down.
21:16Percival,
21:18Percival,
21:18when you were sort of doing your take on Huck Finn,
21:27how many times did you read that book?
21:31Sadly, 15.
21:3315?
21:35Yes.
21:36I needed to divorce myself from the work.
21:38I needed to blur it and forget it.
21:44The real sadness is that 10 times is probably enough.
21:50Did you still like the book at the end of it?
21:54Not at all.
21:56I mean, how did that,
21:58you didn't like it at the end of it,
22:00but how did that,
22:03did you like it the first time?
22:05It's also,
22:06yeah,
22:06I don't think so.
22:08It's hard to hear what you're saying
22:10on this bouncy thing,
22:12but do,
22:13yeah.
22:14Well,
22:15strangely,
22:16in person,
22:17my voice is not synced with my lips either,
22:19so.
22:19Yeah,
22:20that's a kind of weird.
22:21I'm a lover of Twain's writing,
22:27and his nonfiction is fantastic.
22:30Huck Finn happens to be a failed novel.
22:32It's an important novel,
22:34but it's not the greatest work of art.
22:38One of the reasons is because of the reintroduction of Tom Sawyer at the end.
22:44I hate Tom Sawyer.
22:45And it's for mercenary reasons.
22:51Twain,
22:51like most of us who write,
22:54was famously in need of money,
22:56and thought that he could save the book,
23:00have it be a success,
23:02if he inserted his money-making character.
23:04I didn't,
23:13yeah.
23:13Money-making character,
23:15I think.
23:15The voice,
23:16the,
23:16it's a,
23:17yeah,
23:17there's a kind of echo,
23:19so it's hard to,
23:20yeah.
23:22Oh, good.
23:22You can?
23:23Yeah?
23:23You're okay.
23:24You can hear what's going on.
23:26Okay.
23:26If I can.
23:27Yes,
23:27yeah,
23:27I hear you perfectly.
23:29Yeah.
23:30Yeah,
23:31yeah,
23:31yeah.
23:32Did,
23:32well,
23:33you were,
23:33yeah.
23:34Can I,
23:35if I can pick up on something.
23:36Yeah,
23:36yeah.
23:37Kieran was saying about Marquez,
23:40he,
23:40he said,
23:42nothing he wrote.
23:44He,
23:44he,
23:44he saw him,
23:45I mean,
23:45some interviews and writings,
23:48he described himself again and again as a journalist,
23:51and that he said somewhere that I read,
23:53that he never wrote anything that he hadn't witnessed.
23:57And,
23:57and I think there is at the moment in literature,
24:01in Western literature,
24:02a dogma of authenticity and a cult of authenticity,
24:08which Percival skewered so brilliantly in erasure.
24:12Mm-hmm.
24:13And it's this idea that we can be reduced to very simple tropes,
24:20and if we seek to go beyond them,
24:22we're somehow inauthentic to ourselves.
24:25And I think that that is quite a pernicious poison that is in literary culture at the moment.
24:35And the,
24:36the power of story,
24:38fiction if you like,
24:40is that it allows ourselves to transcend the immediate,
24:45and speak to much larger truths about ourselves and our world.
24:50Yeah.
24:51Whereas if we allow ourselves to be enslaved by this dogma of authenticity,
24:58only write about what we think we know,
25:02which is really only the opinions of others,
25:05then we're going to fail as novelists,
25:07and the novels will fail.
25:09In your book, Kiran,
25:12you write a lot about writing,
25:15because your main characters are writers.
25:18And I was very amused when Sonia is going to write her creative writing short story,
25:27and she changes guavas to pairs,
25:31because she doesn't want to orientalize her characters.
25:35Do you want to talk about that?
25:36Yeah, I think I mentioned this yesterday as well.
25:39I was listening to a very funny conversation between Salman Rushdie and Marlon James,
25:46the Jamaican writer who was here in Jaipur.
25:49And I think Salman Rushdie was asked,
25:53you know,
25:53what advice he would give a young writer.
25:55And he said,
25:58all the fruit in titles,
26:00just don't put fruit in your title.
26:02And I felt so embarrassed because of my hullabaloo in the guava orchard.
26:06But I love the way you sort of poke gentle fun at your own book.
26:10And it's true.
26:11I mean, don't put tropical fruit in your titles.
26:14Yeah.
26:14But why?
26:16Why?
26:18Because for us, it's quite normal to eat a tropical fruit, right?
26:21So exotic to whom is the question.
26:24But I have found that I will question what I'm doing in a novel,
26:27because I know it's going to be looked at in a particular way,
26:30read in a particular way.
26:33Who's the audience?
26:34Who's going to be examining it?
26:35You know, it's a ridiculous thing.
26:37It's a ridiculous thing that you think fiction should be free,
26:40but it's not free.
26:41You're writing.
26:42It's going to be seen from a political angle.
26:44It's going to be looked at in a certain way.
26:46So I, myself, I sometimes think like,
26:48oh, I'm going to take the guava out now.
26:50I'm just going to make it an apple.
26:51Is that what you feel as well, Tash?
26:55When you were writing about Malaysia and this new book?
27:00Actually, no.
27:02I feel very, I have a very curious relationship with my writing,
27:07because I always believe that no one is going to read anything I write.
27:10So I'm completely free to write whatever I want to write.
27:13I do think the relationship between, you know,
27:17writers always say that they're writing either fiction or non-fiction.
27:21But whatever form they say they're working in,
27:24I always think it reveals so much more about themselves
27:27than they think it is.
27:30So, for example, when a writer writes very clearly non-fiction,
27:35they say things like,
27:37I'm going to, I'm pitching a project to my publisher on a subject,
27:42and the subject has seemingly nothing to do with them.
27:46The question is always,
27:48why are you drawn to that non-fiction subject?
27:50So I'm just going to write about an abusive mother.
27:53It speaks volumes about the kind of relationships they must have.
27:56Why are you drawn to those kinds of relationships?
27:58And I think the converse is true.
28:01We say we want to write fiction
28:03because we want to work in a form
28:06that is free from the requirements of authenticity.
28:09This is what I tell myself often.
28:12You know, I hate the idea of authenticity.
28:15As Richard's pointed out,
28:16I think it's a very limiting thing.
28:18And yet, I do still keep being drawn back
28:21to certain people, certain settings, and certain themes.
28:26So actually, am I really as free from my concerns as I think I am?
28:31You know, I think we always set out to think,
28:33we're going to write something that's bigger than ourselves.
28:36But really, we're just writing manifestations of who we are.
28:41I'm not entirely sure I have anything to add.
28:44I was just sort of laughing to myself about the idea of,
28:46are there any rules,
28:47and that someone gives such a mad, wonderful, specific response,
28:51don't have fruit in the title.
28:52Because in a way, of course, we know there are no rules.
28:55But it's nice, the idea that you could reassure some people in the audience,
28:58yes, there is one rule.
29:00They think, right, tick, I will do that, yeah.
29:03I once was teaching a class,
29:05and I said that I really felt that the word gingerly meant nothing.
29:10And then everything that they wrote for me after that
29:12had the word gingerly in to try and disprove it.
29:15But sometimes you feel so sure you've hit upon one rule.
29:19Like, what does gingerly even mean?
29:20I'm just not going to use it anymore.
29:23So it's a little bit like that.
29:25But I don't, I think that even if you're writing fiction,
29:31it's almost always you come across something that has so many facts
29:35that will take away the believability for your readers
29:40in what you're writing,
29:41that you have to find the sort of factual truth in it.
29:45And I find myself,
29:46although one of the things I think I don't like is research,
29:50and I love to just make things up,
29:52I'm almost always finding that I've written myself into a corner
29:55where I actually cannot go on until I leave my study
29:58and go and travel to some place
30:00or go to a library and find something
30:03because I need it to be utterly believable.
30:06Because we all know reading a book,
30:08if you find one thing that you don't believe in
30:10or you realize that's actually not true,
30:12you lose faith in everything.
30:14So I find myself doing so much more research
30:16than I ever have planned to do with each book.
30:20Yeah.
30:22Which part of your writing do you enjoy the most?
30:25Is it the research?
30:26Is it the first draft?
30:28Is it the edits?
30:29I love beginning.
30:31And then I get stuck in the murky middle,
30:33sometimes for years.
30:34And I'm like, why?
30:35And then I read the beginning and I'm like, I love it.
30:38I have to find a home for that beginning.
30:39And on I go.
30:41It's the total opposite for me.
30:43I can't bear beginnings.
30:44Beginnings slow me down.
30:45I mean, I can spend years on the beginning.
30:48I was very heartened to read an interview
30:52with Hilary Mantel many years ago
30:54where when she was asked what was the last thing she ever did
30:58with a novel when she was editing.
31:00And she always said, she always rewrote,
31:05when she'd finished the novel,
31:06she went back to the beginning to rewrite it.
31:09Because only when she wrote the novel
31:11and had finished it,
31:12that she knew what it was meant to be
31:14and what the form and the style
31:16and the purpose of the novel was.
31:17And therefore, the beginning had to reflect that
31:21where she didn't know that at the beginning.
31:23You have to sort of write your way.
31:29I find that I have,
31:32I feel as if the novel is there
31:34and I have to find it somehow.
31:38I feel as if it does exist already.
31:41But my job through my writing is to reach it somehow.
31:45You see a glimpse of it.
31:47Sorry?
31:47You see glimpses of it.
31:49Yeah, it's as if, you know,
31:51that until I reach the place where that novel is,
31:56bit by bit, character by character,
31:59it's never going to let me go,
32:02even if I hate it.
32:03I really find the first draft part
32:06both difficult and joyous.
32:10But it's a sort of secret.
32:11Do you tell people what you're writing?
32:13Do you show them your drafts and things
32:16before the whole thing is done?
32:20You?
32:20No.
32:21No?
32:22Good.
32:24I've found it to be catastrophic.
32:27Yeah.
32:28Why would it be catastrophic?
32:31Well, I think it exists in a final, finished form,
32:36or it doesn't really exist at all
32:39because showing parts of a novel,
32:44it's like showing a big toe or an earlobe
32:49and asking people to sort of work out the human being
32:53that it's connected to.
32:55And, of course, they can't.
32:57And they say idiotic, flattering things about the toe
33:00or the earlobe.
33:01And, you know, they don't have a clue at all
33:03what you're trying to do.
33:04Yes.
33:04And they're lying to you.
33:06So that's rather disillusioning.
33:08But, I mean, everyone works in different ways.
33:12But myself, no, I show no one.
33:14Because, Esther, you teach creative writing.
33:17That involves sharing work before it's complete, isn't it?
33:21Well, I encourage my students to do so many things
33:25that I would never do.
33:28And I see how much it helps them sharing their work.
33:32They realize this doesn't work
33:33or this needs cutting or this,
33:35but I never do it.
33:37And I think it's a great idea,
33:40but it doesn't work for me
33:41because just like you said, Richard,
33:44I feel, what if they point something out that I know?
33:47I'll be so furious.
33:48I only share my work
33:50when there's nothing I can think of doing
33:52to make it better,
33:53but I'm sure it could be better.
33:55And that's when I share it with someone.
33:57That's usually about third or fourth draft by then.
34:00Yeah.
34:01Do you like to?
34:03Well, it took me 20 years
34:06to write the book that I just published.
34:09And I certainly didn't show it to anybody
34:11for at least 15 of those years.
34:13Oh, gosh.
34:14So, no, although I am a product of writing schools
34:19and I've also taught,
34:22but, yeah, I mean,
34:24I'm really listening to what Richard just said
34:27that, you know, you praise the toe.
34:29And a lot of when I am teaching,
34:33I am trying to tell students
34:37or to try and show them where,
34:39and, you know,
34:39when you ask this whole panel is,
34:42where does writing come from?
34:44And I'm just,
34:44I never think of it when I'm working,
34:46but when I teach,
34:47I have to think about it
34:48because I think,
34:49what am I going to tell these kids?
34:51And a lot of it is trying to show them
34:54or try to get them to see
34:57where the imaginative space of their work lies.
35:01And sometimes it's not in the complete work at all, right?
35:04It's the, where is the novel?
35:06Where is that creature that you are trying to find?
35:09It's often between things.
35:12It's often between places.
35:14It's often lies between contradictions,
35:17between geographies.
35:18And you can see it
35:19and then you try and read other writers' work
35:21and you say,
35:22oh, this is what Kafka is doing, right?
35:24He's, there's a traveler.
35:26He's at the bottom of a bridge.
35:27She's looking up at the illusory emptiness
35:30of a castle up above.
35:33And that seems like a metaphor for writing.
35:35Something's there.
35:36You don't know how you're going to get there,
35:38but the cloudiness
35:40or that empty space is so important.
35:43Yes, yeah, yeah.
35:44If I may say,
35:45I think nothing is more secondary
35:47to an author's achievement with a novel
35:51than their original ambitions and intentions.
35:55Sadly.
35:55Because, yeah, if a book succeeds,
35:58it escapes the author's thin personality
36:02and small history
36:03and it becomes something much larger.
36:07And it always seems to me
36:09that you only discover the true subject
36:11of your novel after it's published
36:15and you meet your readers.
36:16And reading's, we've all met writers
36:20and reading is a far more intelligent
36:22and creative act and writing and writers.
36:25And it's in that communal act of reading
36:29that the book comes alive
36:30and it becomes something else.
36:32And it's quite shocking
36:33when you discover it wasn't what you intended.
36:36And it's so, you know,
36:38astonishing when a reader comes up to you
36:40and tells you about your book.
36:42Sometimes you haven't thought of it that way at all.
36:45Percival, did you want to add something about...
36:48Percival, did you want to add something on this?
36:57Well, actually, it was just stated
36:58that readers are far more important than I am.
37:04They often mention scenes
37:06that I don't remember at all.
37:08And certainly, I don't know what it means.
37:13I don't know what any of my books mean.
37:15I wait for the readers to tell me.
37:18And then I take credit for it.
37:21They come up with great ideas
37:23that I've never thought of.
37:25I think on that note,
37:26we can open it up to a few questions.
37:29It's a huge audience.
37:30We have five minutes for questions.
37:37There's somebody right here
37:39in a red T-shirt.
37:50Would you keep it quite brief?
37:52Yes, yes.
37:53So my question is to Kiran, ma'am.
37:55I have read somewhere
37:58that Virginia Woolf says
37:59fiction has more facts than truth.
38:03And you yesterday were talking about
38:06how much you write in fiction
38:08what we live every day,
38:10but we don't talk about it openly.
38:11So your comment on that.
38:13I think everyone should answer this question,
38:17not just myself.
38:20Maybe Percival should answer this question
38:22because he has not had much time here
38:24and because he's on Zoom
38:26at 5 a.m. in the morning.
38:27Yes, yes.
38:31Thank you for joining.
38:33Very sweet of you.
38:34On my end, it sounds like I'm a giant
38:37yelling at everyone.
38:38What was the question?
38:51What was the question?
38:53I am serious.
38:54I suffer from early onset dementia
38:58and I won't know what the question was.
39:02Will someone help me?
39:04The question I think was about
39:08living many kind of important facts
39:12on a daily basis,
39:14but not actually feeling that we're doing so.
39:19Well, one of the true things about fiction
39:21is fiction as far deals with truth.
39:25Journalism deals with facts.
39:28You can have five novels
39:29that talk about what happened
39:31to Hitler in the bunker
39:32and all of them can be true
39:35without having a single fact.
39:39And that's because we come to novels
39:41with our understanding of human beings
39:43and the novel becomes real for us
39:46and we see people interacting
39:48and that's where we all become
39:50so sick and weird.
39:53We will actually argue with each other
39:54about whether a character
39:57who does not exist
39:58is doing something
39:59in line with his or her character.
40:04And I think that's wonderful.
40:05If you can get people
40:07to be that mentally ill,
40:09you're succeeding in your work.
40:14Yeah, go ahead.
40:15Yes, please.
40:17I was thinking
40:18that Borges writes,
40:20you can tell that the Quran
40:22is an Arabic book
40:23because there isn't
40:24a single camel in it.
40:30Like the tropical fruit.
40:32Like the tropical fruit.
40:34Absolutely.
40:37So places,
40:38you know,
40:38when you really look at places,
40:40the novel gives meaning to a place.
40:43I think that's also
40:44a fascinating thing.
40:45When you look at a place
40:46and you think of it
40:47only because of a character
40:48or because of a book
40:49and the book creates
40:51an actual place.
40:53So the false thing
40:55creates the real thing.
40:56Yeah, absolutely.
40:57So many Indians
40:59who go to England
41:01because of the amount
41:02of Western literature
41:03we read,
41:04particularly British,
41:06feel as if they've
41:07been there before,
41:08although they've never
41:09stepped into London before.
41:12Did you want to say something, Tash?
41:14Okay.
41:15Then we'll move on to the...
41:17There's a lady...
41:18Hi, thank you.
41:24I wanted to ask you
41:25about how you choose
41:27the idea that you focus on.
41:30So I'm sure you all
41:32have many ideas for books.
41:33How do you choose one
41:35that you then cultivate
41:36into a novel?
41:40Which of you would like to...
41:41Esther, will you go for that?
41:43Sometimes an idea
41:44comes so clearly
41:45and cleanly
41:46and even the title
41:47comes too
41:48and that's such a gift
41:50and a blessing
41:50but sometimes like
41:51with my last book
41:52I didn't have
41:53a clear idea at all
41:55or it felt like
41:56nothing...
41:57I was starting to write
41:58during lockdown
41:59and I felt no idea
42:01was clear and clean for me
42:03in the kind of noise
42:04of the world
42:05and that's when
42:06I think I said earlier
42:07I just started to write
42:08and then slowly
42:10what I wanted to write about
42:11it sort of revealed itself
42:13to me
42:14and that was quite
42:16a painful journey.
42:18I much prefer
42:19to have the idea first
42:20but sometimes you have
42:21the idea
42:22and it turns out
42:23there's nothing inside it
42:24so it's never clear.
42:28Tash, what about you?
42:30I take a long time
42:31to settle on an idea
42:33but when I finally do
42:35it tends to be
42:36the right one
42:37and it's a question
42:37of sort of
42:38just fashioning it
42:40into something
42:40that resembles a novel.
42:44I think we are out of time.
42:46It says 0000 here
42:49so thank you all
42:50for being here.
42:52I know it's late
42:53you're tired.
42:54Thank you to this
42:54wonderful panel.
42:56Thank you to the JLF.
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