It\u2019s just gone 1.30 pm and already there\u2019s a sizeable crowd gathered outside Manchester\u2019s Central Library. The talk doesn\u2019t begin till 2pm, but the audience are keen to get inside and secure front row streets. When Elif Shafak, Nadeem Aslam, and Erica Wagner, our chair for the event, walk on to the stage, there\u2019s a burst of excited applause from the audience.<\/p>\n
Erica Wagner introduces our writers who between them have garnered an impressive number of awards and nominations.<\/p>\n
Writing as they are, at \u2018the turn of the century,\u2019 a phrase Wagner takes much delight in using, both writers deal with the very human, the very central, concerns of identity, and with what it means to be an individual with an independent perspective in our contemporary society.<\/p>\n
There is little preamble as Wagner dives straight in with her first question, directed at both writers: Literature is a public act and a powerful instrument against injustice. There is a concern about how the world being what it is, there seems to be this urgency for news, it feels like it\u2019s possible to forget about the presence of literature as a public act.<\/p>\n
For Aslam, the answer to this question is rooted in a particular incident. He recounts the Virak Mendis story, a Sri Lankan refugee, who, in the late 1980\u2019s, sought sanctuary in a Church until police stormed it: \u2018It was moment of great moral crisis. Someone had graffitied \u2018Viraj Mendis will not go,\u2019 after his deportation, the \u2018go\u2019 was replaced with \u2018be forgotten\u2019. I kept a journal and I wrote: this is the kind of novels I will write. First, the resistance we won\u2019t go, we won\u2019t let the world do this to us, then the defeat, and third, we won\u2019t be forgotten.\u2019<\/p>\n
As he talks, Shafak and Wagner are nodding their heads in agreement, there are murmurs of \u2018yes\u2019, and \u2018I remember that\u2019, from the audience, many of who clearly know this story.<\/p>\n
For Shafak, it\u2019s about creating spaces, \u2018I open up spaces, I like it when we ask questions and leave it to the readers. The questions cannot not be political. \u00a0It\u2019s about giving more voice, bringing the periphery to the centre \u2013 so minorities play a central role. There\u2019s a multiplicity of voices.\u2019<\/p>\n
This challenge, to present alternative views has been a constant for Shafak in her literary career, and it\u2019s why her writing is so often seen as contentious.<\/p>\n
\u2018Writing fiction has never been auto-biographical for me,\u2019 Shafak continues, \u2018I\u2019m much more interested in not being myself \u2013 my life is very boring (this makes the audience laugh). This empathy, the journey of putting yourself in another\u2019s space \u2013 those are the intellectual and spiritual journeys that interest me.\u00a0 We have this multiplicity of voice inside us, but we try to suppress it.\u2019 She quotes Adorno, \u2018\u201cintolerance of ambiguity is a sign of an authoritarian mind,\u201d we have become so accustomed to duality, but it\u2019s a clash between two certainties, there is very little room for nuances. Fiction can only ask questions, why not a fifth way, or an eighth way? We don\u2019t have to limit ourselves. The novel as a genre, the art of storytelling, speaks to our inner space.\u2019<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a break in the talk as Aslam reads from the opening of The Golden Legend<\/em>.<\/p>\n After, Wagner, careful not to throw in spoilers, questions Aslam on his protagonist Nargis and the way in which her past identity is something she, almost inadvertently, moves away from.<\/p>\n Aslam: I was thinking of Sylvia Plath\u2019s line, \u2018I am, I am, I am,\u2019 in mind here. It\u2019s linked, in a way to what I was trying to hint at \u2013 what does identity mean in a society where there\u2019s so much pressure to say \u2018I am\u2019, it\u2019s linked to the keys in the novel. This is my attempt to try to understand how one thing in the world is created by another. Maybe as we get older, we will see how we are all connected, \u2018knowing\u2019 without \u2018seeing\u2019, so we can weave a story around those invisible connections \u2013 make the invisible visible.<\/p>\n Wagner: I was thinking, there\u2019s this magical place, this extraordinary Island in The Golden Legend<\/em>, and there\u2019s Oxford, in The Three Daughters of Eve<\/em>, both seem to be magical spaces of freedom of thought, how did you feel about these spaces?<\/p>\n Aslam: I\u2019ve always said my rivers are imaginary, but the fish are real (cue more laughter from the audience). Islands do exist like this. I was thinking of Lindisfarne, the first island said to be attacked by Vikings, that village and the idea of having a safe space, where gravity would not be a presence \u2013 somewhere safe.<\/p>\n Shafak: I wanted to understand how a girl like Peri, for the first time coming to Oxford, would feel, and the contrast of being in this place compared to her home in Turkey \u2013 it\u2019s everything. Our past, is full of ruptures, but in Oxford there is continuity. It interests me \u2013 the way fiction can give another side to what is the history of a space.<\/p>\n There\u2019s second break as Shafak takes the stand and reads from The Three Daughters of Eve<\/em>. She chooses a section from the beginning of the novel where the narrator comments on the gulf between her parents \u2013 it\u2019s that duality at play, the father\u2019s secularism vs. the mother\u2019s increasing religiosity. Peri, the youngest child and only daughter, is caught in the middle.<\/p>\n Shafak elucidates: Peri is the confused one of the three friends in the novel. There\u2019s the secular one, the believer, and the confused. I wanted the Turkish one to be the confused \u2013 because we are, we are polarised \u2013 we forget our history. Peri represents Turkey. \u00a0I want to focus on the micro-histories, it\u2019s important to allow yourself to ask questions \u2013 What happened?<\/p>\n And on this note, Wagner opens the floor for questioning.<\/p>\n Elif Shafak & Nadeem Aslam, Central Library, 15 October 2017. It\u2019s just gone 1.30 pm and already there\u2019s a sizeable crowd gathered outside Manchester\u2019s Central Library. The talk doesn\u2019t begin till 2pm, but the audience are keen to get inside and secure front row streets. When Elif Shafak, Nadeem Aslam, and Erica Wagner, our chair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nUsma Malik<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"