The Booker-shortlisted author on her inability to compromise, her friendship with John Berger, and the last book she gave as a gift
, a post-Holocaust narrative cited as “a novel that goes to the heart of any disaster” when it won the Orange prize in 1997. Her latest novel,, now out in paperback, is on the shortlist for this year’s Booker prize, whose winner is announced on 12 November. Praised by theas “a lyrical jigsaw of impressions and observations”, it moves between 1902 and 2025 in the company of a large cast of characters both fictitious and historical.
What led you to the style, both vivid and vague at once? I’m thinking, for example, of the startling glimpses of life in unspecified war zones during a segment set in the 1980s, or the way the novel introduces real-life figures to the action so subtly that weI wanted the history to be under the surface. There’s a different measure for history that has to do with the agency of our inner lives: whether we turn our eyes a micrometre in one direction or another is crucial.
A book, for me, takes as long as it takes. I think you only have one chance and I’d rather write the book that needs to be writtenA book, for me, takes as long as it takes. I think you only have one chance at a book and I’d rather write the book that needs to be written – and write fewer. It sometimes requires patience because I don’t know how to compromise. It’s hard to know there’s no shortcut; you can have your intellect aroused but wait years for connections to emerge.
We were friends for decades, but at the time he wrote that review, we had not yet met. I was tremendously moved. We understood each other – deeply – and it meant a great deal that he said that. My relationship to that phrase of Adorno’s is that one could think of the silence at a funeral. In historical terms, that moment of silence could be years; how long it might be, and the distinction between silence and muteness, is something to think about. Muteness is cessation; silence isn’t.
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