The hardest expectations come from yourselves: Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire stands out among other books in the Man Booker Prize longlist for its simple style.
Kamila Shamsie Photo: Zain Mustafa
Kamila Shamsie Photo: Zain Mustafa

Kamila Shamsie is in the news for making it to the Man Booker Prize 2017 longlist alongside Arundhati Roy, Mohsin Hamid, Paul Auster, Sebastian Barry, Emily Fridlund, Mike McCormack, Jon McGregor, Fiona Mozley, George Saunders, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith and Colson Whitehead. Described as a contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, and the story of an immigrant family, Home Fire is rather easy to read, and stands out among new works for its uncomplicated style. In an email interaction, Shamsie reflects on matters of style and new writing. 

Congratulations on a wonderful book. We found it to be easy, almost breezy reading. The "fire" in the book's title is implicit, and never really directly expressed. What does the fire in the title represent for you? And how do you see this book being a reflection of present-day realities? 
I wanted the idea of Home Fire to convey two possible meanings - on one hand it can be something welcoming, as in the idea of ‘keeping the home fires burning’, but on the other hand it can suggest a house burning down. There’s both familial warmth and destructiveness within the book, so the two meanings reflect that.

The long passage to London is a much-trampled over theme. What aspects were you wary of while writing the story?
It wasn’t really a concern at all, probably because my characters don’t undergo a passage to London. Their parents or grandparents did, but they’re all Londoners, born and bred, and have never seen themselves differently.  

The aspects of migration, cultural differences, and specifically, citizenship, are crucial to this narrative. How did you come to make this more of a personal account?
By writing a novel! It’s not a form that rewards commentary or analysis - it wants stories. 

You seem to stay away from coming across as overly poetic in your passages. 
The writing style in this novel was much more pared down than in my other books. It seemed to happen without my thinking too much about it, but I quickly realised that’s what I wanted to try and convey something of the urgency of the story. 

The journalistic nature of your writing is compelling to us, in the manner that it can address larger issues, while telling a personal story - and therein, find one's own place and voice in the larger scheme of things. This is, in a way, as much an evolved form of personal journal writing, as it is a benchmark for modern-day storytelling. 
Novels have always done that - talk about the larger stories through the smaller intimate stories. So I can’t pretend I’m doing anything that novelists haven’t always done. I don’t think I know the difference between my writing style and my personal style. I try to write in the way that best suits whatever it is I’m writing. 

The retort, "Friends don't let friends become hipsters," midway through the book, resonates in different ways for us. How personal was that sentiment?
I’m too old to have friends who might be hipsters! So fortunately it’s not an issue that arises. 

As an extension of that question, are the book's characters based on personal acquaintances? The voices are endearing, realistic and approachable - regardless of nationality. What manner of a prism did you have to parse the character's individual storylines through, for them to endear to larger groups of readers, reaching beyond cultural borders, as it were?
No, none of them are based on personal acquaintances. I’ve never really believed that people don’t respond to characters from different backgrounds to their own - it isn’t true of the way I respond to either characters in fiction or in real life. As a writer you concentrate on making the characters ‘work’ - that is, seem believable. And of course you want their stories to be interesting.

Is there a thought that binds all of your books so far? There's a feeling of urgency that you leave us with in the end, and we're already expecting the follow-up to this story.
There’s not going to be a follow-up - it ends where it ends. But I’m glad it lingers with you long enough for you to want more. I suppose in some way all the novels are interested in the way history/politics affects individual lives, but I like to think that there’s variety in the way that question is explored.

Tell us a little about the expectations you're given to face. What feedback are you likely to pay heed to, and what would you disregard?
The hardest expectations come from yourselves. You always want to push yourself to write better.  In terms of feedback, there are a select few people who see my novels while they’re in progress and I pay close attention to everything they say - but in the end I have to be the one to decide which of their suggestions I want to implement, and which not. 

How do you see the practice of storytelling emerging from the subcontinent?
I don't think we need to go back centuries to know that English language writing coming out of India in the 80’s played an influential role in re-shaping the Anglophone novel by making it more open to voices from beyond Britain and America. As for literature closer to home, I think the challenge for writers everywhere now is to find a way to make their writing speak to the times we’re living in. 

Home Fire, Bloomsbury India, releases on Aug 15.

— Jaideep Sen
 jaideep@newindianexpress.com
 @senstays

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