Somewhere in the evolution of fiction writing, post-colonial literature has perhaps emerged just to demystify myths and perceptions regarding the sub-continent. And there is an advantage. ‘Diaspora’ authors with a glimpse of both worlds — their current native country as well as the one that they or their ancestors left behind — are best suited to do this job. Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie (35) spends considerable time in both Karachi and London and thus, blends in the nitty gritties of everyday life in Pakistan’s towns and cities in her novels. In an e-mail interview with Sanjitha Rao Chaini, Shamsie talks about her new novel Burnt Shadows and the recent spurt in authors from Pakistan.
Pakistan is seeing difficult times both due to the recent terror attacks as well as striking a deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley. What exactly is the common man in Pakistan going through at the moment?
I am not comfortable placing myself in a position of authority to speak about the common man. Though I will say that for an appalling number of Pakistanis the mot significant issues in their lives are to do with poverty, lack of infrastructure etc. which, sadly, ahs been the case through Pakistan's history. So to have violence added into the mix via terrorism and battles between the military and extremists must make life even more unbearable.
What compelled you to weave your story around the Partition, the bombings in Japan, etc.?
I wove my story around a cast of characters — when I started I didn't know where the book would take me, and I really was making it up as I went along. But the idea of having characters caught up in war and history, resulting in one kind of displacement of the other, was there from the very early part of the book - so I suppose I just followed that thread and saw where it led me.
| FAST FACTS |
Name: Kamila Shamsie
Born in 1973 in Pakistan
Education: BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College. MFA from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Books By Shamsie:
In the City by the Sea (1998)
Salt and Saffron (2000)
Kartography (2002)
Broken Verses (2005)
Burnt Shadows (2009) |
Authors from Pakistan are in the forefront — Mohammad Hanif, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Moni Mohsin among others. Do you think there is a common thread that binds these authors?
I think we are very different writers — a number of us are engaging with Pakistan's political history through our writing, so that's a thread common to many of us. But Daniyal's writing, and Aamer Hussein's writing, take on social rather than political history, so there are exceptions The only thread that's common to all of us is that we are examining different aspects (and sometimes overlapping aspects) of the same nation.
What is your take on the literature of the Indian sub-continent? To elaborate, do you see any characteristic movement from this part of the world?
No, because I think there is no such thing as a single literature of the sub-continent. Even if we just confine our conversation to English-language writing you would have to say that Indian writing, which has been a very strong presence in Anglopone literature for nearly 30 years, is at a very different place to Pakistani writing — and Pakistani writing is at a very different place to Bangladeshi writing.
There are varying degrees of pain, torture and emotional turbulence one experiences while reading books set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Do you think the political scenario influences/compells the authors to represent/share them in literature?
The novel form loves drama! So, I think you will find pain and emotional turbulence in writing from across the world. But I also think that you will find more overtly political writing from Pakistan, and Afghanistan than from India.
Do you think the reader's empathy of the character is determined by the country's history — both political and cultural?
The country to which the characters belong, or the country to which the readers belong — in either case, I would say no — our empathy and imaginations are not bounded by nations. I certainly grew up reading books about characters in place I had never been, but if the writing was good enough my imagination carried me into those worlds, and into those characters' lives.
A majority of the authors who belong to the diaspora (India/Pakistan) write about their native countries and not about their fellow citizens in the new found land. So, is this some kind of effort to revive/bring to fore some sort of nostalgia?
I think there's a kind of conversation in India about NRI writers which has no equivalent in Pakistan. And I don't think it's possible to make that claim about Pakistani writers (i.e that they write about places they have left behind, and not about the places they live in.) Daniyal Mueenuddin lives in Pakistan; so does Uzma Aslam Khan. Nadeem Aslam's second novel
Maps For Lost Lovers is set entirely in England, and his third novel
The Wasted Vigil is set in Afghanistan. Mohsin Hamid's
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is as much (or possibly more) about New York than Lahore. Aamer Hussein's short stories often use London as a location. Mohammad Hanif has now moved back to Karachi, so if his next novel is set in Pakistan he'll be writing about the place he's in.
My work was entirely based in Karachi at a time when I was doing almost all my writing there. I stopped spending as much time in Karachi two years ago, and I think that isn't unconnected from the fact that the novel I have been working on the last 2-3 years has multiple locations, of which Karachi is only one.
Are you working on anything at the moment -- your next book?
I have four sentences of an opening chapter — I have had them for a couple of months now! At the moment though it's hard to get going because there's so much else to do for the publicity of
Burnt Shadows in different countries. But I hope to get back to work soon.
sanjitha (at) abp (dot) in
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