Bibi Slippers asked Johnny Steinberg a few questions about writing his Alan Paton Award-nominated book Little Liberia.
In Margaret Atwood’s book on writing, Negotiating with the Dead, she compiles a list of hundreds of reasons why writers write. Some of the reasons on the list are:
- To record the world as it is.
- To set down the past before it is all forgotten / To excavate the past because it has been forgotten.
- To satisfy my desire for revenge.
- Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die.
- To produce order out of chaos.
- To hold a mirror up to the reader.
- To show the bastards.
- To make money so my children could have shoes.
- To attract the love of a beautiful woman / To attract the love of any woman at all.
- To serve History.
If you were to name your main reasons for writing this specific book, what would they be?
To see if I was able to bring a non-South African world alive on the page.
Could you describe how you came to write this story? Did the story find you or did you seek it out?
It was very much a case of my going out to find it. In fact, I relocated to another continent for two years to write it.
What is the most important thing you learned or discovered while writing your nominated book?
I came to know the history of Liberia quite intimately. I therefore, for the first time, got to walk through a foreign city, in this instance, Monrovia, and see layers of history behind everything I came across: each building, each monument, each street corner. Getting to know other people’s pasts and other people’s public spaces well is a privilege; it makes you look at your own history a little differently.
Photo: Antoine de Ras
Do you have a "first reader"? And related to this question, who is your ideal reader?
My first reader is almost always the South African writer and journalist Mark Gevisser. Reading a work in progress constructively is a great and unusual skill. Mark is the most insightful, assured reader I know. I am very lucky that he has been willing to read my books in draft from the beginning. As for my ideal reader, it is somebody who understands a book of mine in ways I would never have imagined, thus educating me about what I have written.
Have you decided on the next issue or story you will tackle?
I am juggling research on two books at the moment. At first I worried that this would dissipate attention, but it seems to have done the opposite: the two projects are feeding off each other productively.
What has been your favourite South African read of 2011/2012?
Hard to say. I loved Hugh Lewin’s memoir. I think about it almost every day.
Which one of the nominated books would you place your betting money on to walk away with this year’sprize?
I’m not a betting man.