Interview in OPEN BEAST |
Written by Administrator |
Thursday, 23 February 2012 12:04 |
The secret from India – Jaishree MisraJaishree Misra is a London based Indian author whose debut novel “Ancient Promises” was a worldwide bestseller. Her subsequent books include “Accidents Like Love and Marriage”, “Afterwards” and a historical novel called “Rani”. More recently, she completed a three-book deal for a popular fiction imprint of Harper Collins in the UK, the titles being “Secrets & Lies”, “Secrets & Sins” and “A Scandalous Secret”. She recently moved from London to live in New Delhi, India, where she is currently helping to set up a residential unit for young adults with learning disabilities. We are excited to post this interview.
OpenBeast: Thank you so much for fitting this interview into your busy schedule. Could you please introduce yourself? Thank you, good to be here! In three adjectives…. Self-aware (very important when answering questions like this), empathetic (important to a novelist) and optimistic (usually, but not always, a useful quality). For those of you unfamiliar with your writing, could you tell us about your writing style and genres? None of my books are very literary, by which I mean that they’re written in an easy, accessible manner and are not dense at all. My most recent three books, however, are all-out popular fiction, as they were commissioned by a commercial fiction imprint of Harper Collins in the UK who had very firm rules about the kind of fiction they wanted. It turned out to be quite good fun but I’m glad not to be facing manic deadlines any more and am enjoying writing something a bit deeper at the moment. Your historical novel based on the life of Rani Lakshmibai was banned in one state of India and did upset many readers. Why and what’s your counter or damage control strategy? Well, my view is that ‘Rani’ was banned in Uttar Pradesh because local politicians were using it to deflect attention away from their own shortcomings during a period of drought and food shortages. They claimed that the book was insulting of the queen’s much-loved image – which couldn’t have been a more false allegation, given how adulatory the portrayal is. I do, however, present her as a pacifist and diplomat, however, and make an attempt to explore the woman rather than merely view her as a brave warrior and martial figure as history texts have tended to do. Is that insulting her memory? I didn’t have much of a damage control strategy at the time – terrified and cowering as I was at the shouting and effigy-burning scenes I saw on the TV news! Tempted though we briefly were to mount a robust defense for an artist’s freedom of expression, we found that the ban was not in fact working in practice (the book was selling rather well in Lucknow, the capital of UP) and so the publishers eventually decided to lie low and allow the fuss to die down. Your first novel “Ancient Promises”, which took the literary world by storm, is technically a fictionalized account of your own life. What compelled to write your story? Looking back, I now realize that I’d stored up a lot of stuff inside me that were given vent when I wrote ‘Ancient Promises’. I’d left an unsatisfactory marriage, compelled partially by the birth of my daughter with severe learning disabilities, so raw material was in plenty (sorry, bad pun). I started writing it as a totally personal exercise – a letter of explanation to the man I had by then married – and that probably explains the honesty with which it was written. Readers are generally good at recognizing this and usually appreciate it too. What are your future projects? In terms of writing – it’s a fairly hefty story with a binary narrative (part-historical and part-contemporary) and a serious theme that’s emerging at the moment. In my other life, I’m helping a group of parents set up a long-term residential care centre for adults with disabilities which is coming up on the outskirts of Delhi. Indian writing in English has won a lot of critical acclaim in the literary world, and Indian authors like yourself have really made it big with some fantastic masterpieces. Any advice for aspiring writers? Persist, if you believe in what you’re writing, but be prepared for rejection letters and take on board the feedback they provide as this is one of those areas of work where it’s genuinely hard to judge one’s own talent objectively. It’s actually a great time to be an Indian writing in English as foreign publishers are all looking desperately at the Indian market for being the only one enjoying a growth spurt at the moment. Thank you! |
Last Updated on Thursday, 07 December 2017 11:39 |