The Home of British Asian Writing
Tell us about your debut novel, Where the River Parts? Where the River Parts follows a Hindu Muslim couple caught up in the traumatic Partition of India and Pakistan. They are separated during the process, and don’t see each other for the next fifty years. It is only half a decade later, as both India …
Q. What inspired you to write a psychological thriller? Have you always been fascinated by them or has it been a recent obsession? It’s a return to my roots! My last two novels (The Naked Name of Love and Sugar Island, published by John Murray) were historical fiction, but my first two were literary thrillers. …
Q. The Living is your third novel. Tell us more about the novel writing process. What was different this time round, if at all? The novel writing process is: you’re in the dark, excited to find out about all sorts of things, seeing links, having insights, running around, wondering if you’ve finally lost it (no, actually …
Q. Your debut novel, Londonstani achieved a six-figure advance and was applauded by critics. Looking back, do you think it was a victim of its own early success? The book was clearly a victim of its own hype, but at the same time I actually reckon the hype was this necessary evilness. Because the hype meant that Londonstani found …
Interviewed by James Wilkinson Since publishing her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy has developed into one of the most exciting new voices of South Asian literature. Published to critical acclaim, her first novel was published in thirteen different languages. Her second novel, The Folded Earth won the Economist Crossword Book Award 2011 and achieved …
Q. The Private Life of Mrs Sharma is the second novel that you’ve written. Much has been said and written about writing that difficult ‘second novel’. What mindset were you in when you started? I think the difficulty with the second novel that you refer to applies to those (fortunate?) folks whose first books met …
What inspired you to write, A Restless Wind? Where did the story come from? The story had been gestating since I was a teenager fascinated by the family events of a close relative, the Sufism, a certain annual festival held in the grounds of the house that I’ve renamed Qila. That house and its backyard …
What came first the elephant or Inspector Chopra? You could say Ganesha, the baby elephant in the series, gatecrashed the party. After living in India for 10 years I wanted to write a novel that took readers on a journey to the heart of the subcontinent – and I wanted the lead character, Inspector Chopra, …
Where did the inspiration for Sofia Khan is Not Obliged come from? It was a combination of the absurdity of the Muslim dating scene, my love of Bridget Jones and the fact that there aren’t enough Muslim heroines in literature. The dating book thread actually came from an old colleague at work, and the editorial …
Q. You’ve had a great year. Congratulations! Did it feel good from a writing perspective, or was it distracting? It felt good. My work got into the hands of more readers than it would have done otherwise – that’s a wonderful feeling. But, it’s true: I’ve written nary (a regional word for ‘not’) a word …