Author Q&A
In this series of Q&As, the Climate Fiction Prize talks to each of the shortlisted writers about all things climate, fiction and the inspiration behind their novel.
- How would you summarise your book in one sentence?
A story of the clash between idealism and cynicism, played out in the lives of two families in the world’s most polluted city.
- What inspired you to write this story?
The spark for the book was the family summit that opens the story, and what Brahm Saxena does at the end. If you’ve read the ending, then it will come as no surprise that I had the idea for the novel while travelling through a jungle in central India.
- Did you set out to write a story about climate or did those themes develop through
the writing process?
Both. I knew, from the outset, that Brahm Saxena would reveal at the summit that he had a kind of ecological awakening. But the novel’s engagement with air pollution, in particular, was not part of its “plan”, but the unavoidable consequence of writing about present-day Delhi.
- What’s one book you think readers should pick up after they finish your novel?
The novels from India that reach international readers tend to be those (like mine) that were originally written in English. But, in fact, the vast majority of good Indian writing is in other languages. A small proportion of that writing is available in English translation. Vivek Shanbag’s Ghachar Ghochar, translated from Kannada, is one book that can be safely recommended to almost any reader.
- Is there a book (or film/TV series/play) that made you see the climate crisis differently?
Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, which contains harrowing descriptions of industrial pollution in Manchester in the mid-19th century. If you live in India, ecological devastation isn’t a source of fear or anxiety; it’s a lived reality. Gaskell’s account is tragic without being apocalyptic – her characters live shorter and poorer lives as a result of their conditions, but they mostly respond by “getting on with it”, as people do. This novel from 1850s England felt amazingly true to what I saw in 2020s Delhi.
- What would you say to a reader looking for a sense of hope in turbulent times?
To me, the greatest source of hope or optimism is the past. In the Indian context, in the first half of the 20th century, citizen-led, bottom-up social movements won victories against caste and gender oppression that seemed unthinkable at the time. I drew on that legacy when writing Brahm Saxena. Familiarising ourselves with what our forebears actually achieved, against odds that were greater than those we face, is always worthwhile.
- What’s the one piece of advice you would give to a writer facing a blank page?
The blank page is, for all us writers, a daily source of terror – every sentence a reminder of the gap between what one wants to achieve and what one actually can. I think it is difficult to improve on the advice given to young writers by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who suggested that we should think of writing as a shopkeeper thinks of his or her shop. Some days many customers will come in, some days none at all, but if you keep the shop open – if you sit down at your desk – then, at least, you give yourself a chance
- Your novel links class, caste, patriarchy and colonial history to the climate crisis in deft, humorous but non-didactic ways. Why was it important to you to draw a throughline between all these different issues which can often be treated or looked at separately?
It might be my early academic training, which wasn’t in literature but in history and in social and political thought – it is natural to me to see these phenomena as overlapping and intersecting rather than discrete. I don’t, in any case, set out to write about issues, but about characters. We all live in a moment in historical time; we don’t choose the political or technological changes that shape our lives. The fact that I was writing about families in Delhi, in the present, made climate change, caste, patriarchy and the legacy of colonialism inescapable. As for humour: it is one of the things I value most as a reader. The writers I admire most are what I think of as “seriously funny”, meaning very funny and deadly serious.