Q&A
After coming runner up with special commendation in the Impress Book Prize, this author Q&A was published on their website alongside an extract
http://www.impress-books.co.uk/impress-prize/
Where did you first come up with the idea for your novel?
I live on Dartmoor with my family, thousands of miles away from my childhood in 1970’s Israel. Growing up in a kibbutz community, I and my contemporaries would frequently roam the fields and valleys outside of our perimeter fence, and cross the river Jordan to play in the ruins of a nearby Arab village. The villagers had escaped during the 1948 war, named War of Independence by Jews and al-Nakba, or Catastrophe, by Palestinians. At the time I never gave those refugees a thought, except to associate them with the infiltrators and terrorists that caused men I knew to spend years in the army, defending our borders and going to war. It would take decades for the fate of those villagers to become the starting point for my novel, the setting of the first section I wrote.
About ten years ago I read Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury, a novel about an aging Palestinian, lying in a coma in a Beirut refugee camp, who has been separated from his family since that same 1948 war. This was my immediate inspiration for Night Swimming in the Jordan.
Lastly, I wanted to explore the social experiment of a kibbutz. Growing up in that Socialist environment, I took babies being separated from their parents, communal living and equal pay to be completely normal. When my own children were growing up in Devon I was forced to re-evaluate these childhood norms, and began to consider education and family life from a new perspective. The kibbutz became the setting for Abbie’s story in the novel, the setting for the modern story of Yasmin and Josh being Dartmoor, Devon.
One desert island: one book. Which one?
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It has enough depth to warrant several readings by a lonely castaway. A compelling story of infinite humanity, it is set in India during the 1970s and 80s. I would like to work out how Mistry manages to create such effortless and subtle transitions between tragedy and comedy, and how he weaves a wide ranging plot, and structures it so coherently. And I absolutely love the way he handled the ending, which is rare even amongst eminent writers.
Which authors inspired you to start writing?
These, in no particular order, are a few of the many authors I admire:
Anne Tyler for dialogue and celebrating the antihero; Margaret Atwood because her books are all superb and different to each other; Sebastian Faulk for great story telling – I’m loving A Possible Life at the moment; Kate Atkinson for energetic prose and characterisation; and, in no way least, two giants of Israeli literature, both of whom were instrumental to the development of my love of books during my formative years, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua.
But in truth, none of these inspired me to start writing. The thought of how good they are has always intimidated me, and been enough to stop me having a go myself. My final inspiration was a chance encounter with a particularly bad novel, of the sort I normally avoid. The cover informed me that it was a ‘Number One Best Seller’; the title was intriguing and in short I was taken in and decided to read it. I soon discovered the extent of my mistake. Then the thought struck me that I could make a better job of writing than this author did, and I found that realisation enough of an encouragement to get started.
Do you have any hints or tips for people who want to start writing?
Absolutely none for others. I think everyone is different and I am still learning what works for me. If I were to give my earlier self advice, I would say, first, get over that crippling fear of failure; take it seriously and dedicate a lot of time to the writing; and go on a writing course (which I still haven’t done).