Litnet

Bibi Slippers asked Henrietta Rose-Innes a few questions about writing her Sunday Times Literary Award-nominated book Nineveh.

Buy Nineveh from Kalahari.com.

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?

Number 5 – "order out of chaos" – strikes a chord and echoes a theme of Nineveh. There’s certainly a bit of "showing the bastards". Not so much the children’s shoes, although I do have extensive cat food expenses. Mostly, though, I wrote the book because it niggled at me before I began it, perplexed me while I was doing it, and aggravated me until it was done.

If there were to be a large-scale film adaptation of your book, who would you cast as your main character, and why?

Nobody in Hollywood looks quite like the Family Grubbs. Far easier to cast would be the character below. A few million body doubles and you're good to go.

Was there anything you found particularly difficult in writing your nominated book?

I am reasonably good at beginnings and endings, but there’s always a swampy stretch in the middle. I spent a lot of time tightening the book up structurally and rearranging the order of scenes to sustain the pace. I find it helps to print everything out and scatter the pages on the carpet.

I can't say I ever experienced that – not as a single moment of revelation. The Narnia books were probably the ones that first spurred me to make things up, in a daydreamy sort of way. I wouldn't call them stories: more just scenes and pictures. The Moomintroll books put some otherworldly images into my head at a tender age, too. But it took a long time for me to work myself around to thinking that I could (or should) publish such things myself.

Do you have a "first reader"? And relating to this question, who is your ideal reader?

My agent and my sister were the first to read bits of Nineveh – two sets of gimlet eyes, two versions of an ideal reader. Actually, quite a few people had a look at the book at draft manuscript and proof stage – far more than with previous projects. I find it hard to show work to people, especially when it’s not completely totally complete, but this time I tried to open myself up to it. So I had kind friends and friendly authors, my editor and publishers all giving me responses. It’s very reassuring to find that there’s some consensus about the book: it prepares you for what the critical reception will be on publication.

What has been your favourite South African read of 2011/2012?

There have been quite a few – in 2011 alone, I particularly enjoyed Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart by Finuala Dowling, The Loss Library by Ivan Vladislavic and Cabin Fever by Diane Awerbuck. None of these books, however, could save your life, whereas I can make that claim for Why do Aircraft Crash? by master pilot Steve Murray, which I had the pleasure of editing last year. Useful, fascinating, petrifying.

Which one of the nominated books would you place your betting money on to walk away with this year’s prize?

Betting on literature is a fool’s game – I’d rather put it on the horses.

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