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Dart, thank you all very much for coming today. My name is Alex Font Anselm, and I'm a British historian. I wrote a book called Indian Summer, which is most relevant to this, about the partition of India and Pakistan. I'm here today
Launch event for 'A God in Every Stone' by Carla Power, exploring history, archaeology, and complex characters across empires.
Key Takeaways
- The novel intricately weaves personal stories with broader historical events and empires.
- Character development can be a complex and evolving process for authors.
- Women’s roles in archaeology and society during WWI provide a unique lens for the story.
- Historical fiction can illuminate forgotten or overlooked aspects of history.
- The novel’s rich language enhances the emotional and sensory experience of the narrative.
What the video covers
- The event features Carla Power discussing her new novel 'A God in Every Stone' at the Lahore Literary Festival 2014.
- Alex Font Anselm, a British historian, introduces Carla and contextualizes the novel with his own work on India-Pakistan partition.
- The novel follows Vivian Rose Spencer, an English archaeologist during WWI, and explores themes of empire, friendship, injustice, love, and betrayal.
- Carla describes the challenges of developing her lead character, Vivian, contrasting with the easier creation of the Pashtun brothers.
- The narrative spans multiple countries including India, France, England, and Turkey, highlighting historical and cultural complexities.
- The discussion includes the role of women archaeologists in the early 20th century and the suffragette movement's influence.
- A vivid reading from the book illustrates the poetic and immersive language used to depict key moments and settings.
- Carla shares insights into the evolution of the story and characters, including how secondary characters gained prominence.
- The conversation touches on the intersection of history, archaeology, and fiction in crafting the novel.
- Audience members gain a deeper understanding of the novel’s historical context and literary style.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
with Carmen, who needs very little introduction. She is a multiple award-shortlisted author, the author now of six books, I think, with this being number six. Okay, that's more than a lot of people manage. I've done two. She is a
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wit, a wisdom, and a wonderful woman, so no pressure to impress this crowd. Her new book, which we're launching today, is A God in Every Stone. I'm going to read you the description from the press release, which says it's a rich and vivid
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tale of friendship, injustice, love, and betrayal. A God in Every Stone carries you on an epic journey to India, France, England, and Turkey. This masterfully crafted novel explores the heart of empires fallen and conquered. It reminds us that we all have our place in the
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chaos of history and that so much of what is lost will not be forgotten. It's also absolutely brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because I'm sitting here. Carla, how would you describe the book? I had a journalist the other
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day say to me, "Could you describe your novel in one word?" You know, there's a reason it took me 300 pages to write the thing. How do I describe it? I'm very bad at describing my own books. Many of the
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thought, yes, I wouldn't. Okay, yeah, that's why there's someone else doing that. It focuses on—it starts with a character called Vivian Rose Spencer. She's an English woman who has an interest in archaeology, and it's during World War One. I was struck by Vikram Seth
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talking yesterday about how he had, with an unequal music, he had met his lead character. He'd been in Hyde Park in London, and he had seen this man walking by the Serpentine, who he decided was the lead character of his novel.
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I wanted to ask, where did you meet Vivienne Rose Spencer? It's interesting because she's a gator. I didn't meet her until very long after I started writing her. I had a very hard time with her. You know, I had this English woman who's
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an archaeologist, and she just wasn't living on the page. It's one of the strange things as a writer—you can't quite figure out how it happens—that the two Pushtoon brothers in their car, you manage EEB girl, they sort of, you
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know, fell on the page fully formed practically, and with Vivian, it took me a very long time. What really helped me was reading about women archaeologists around the First World War and what their lives were in this
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strange period, where, you know, it was—I think an interesting thing to be a woman because you had the suffragette movement, which had been very strong. A lot of women were opposed to it, but it was something that was very much
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happening. You had women demanding the vote for women in the news, and then you had the war break out and women going into work. But you also had, at this time, women archaeologists. It's really true that the decade that
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starts in a major way archaeology for women, and I think it's around 1911 or so that they had the first all-female digs going on, and thereby a group of American women. So it's sort of, you know, she
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came to me really in an odd way from the times around her and from sort of what was going on with different kinds of English women. I started to sort of go back from the very large scale to
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narrowing down to who she was. But really, you know, I wrote many drafts of her before I knew her at all. So you came to know her gradually. I was going to ask also about the Najeeb
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called the Pashtun brothers. How about them? He said they were all fully formed at the beginning. Yeah, and it's a strange thing that you mentioned, you know, Vikram meeting this character in Hyde Park and writing about it. I had a very weird version of
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that, which was I had written most of the book, and at the beginning of the other novel, when you first meet Najib girl, he's 11 years old. I had written a couple of drafts of it, and the
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G was a character I knew, you know, quite intimately from the beginning. I was in Peshawar a couple of years ago, and my father's best friend had taken my sister and me along. Here he was
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videoing, and then he sent me a video that he'd taken. There's one point where my sister and I had walked ahead, and there were some schoolboys who saw him with a camera, and they just started sort of, you know, as ice baths, asani boys
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do, you know, making a shirt from the camera and raising their school hats and laughing. I was watching it, and there was no Jieb. I mean, there was a boy who looked as I imagined. I can't describe
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what that moment—I just froze that, that, you know, and had it still of it. I thought, oh, there he is. You know, he's in, he's in the shower today. He'll never know. He'll never know he
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could be here now, but Caillou was different. So originally, the novel was about these archaeologists. It was about this English woman, Vivian Rose Spencer, and this young person, archaeologist Michelle Rhee, archaeologist. In the beginning, there was, when I first started
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writing, I made a reference to his brother. There was a one line about his brother who'd been a soldier in the army and was now, you know, a follower of Hana Baraka Farhan and, you know, in the way of
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non-violence, and he was really going to be a very minor character, Kay Hume. But he just, you know, as I was writing more about Najib, I really became much more interested in this brother, and he becomes the focal brother of the truth.
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Yes, absolutely he does. I'm going to ask you to read just a paragraph from the book because the language is so wonderful, and I really want the audience to get a flavor of it. I'm sure lots of you haven't yet read it,
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so they come out very recently. This paragraph is from early in the book. It's when Vivian Rose Spencer is in Turkey, where she's been on an archaeological dig with an archaeologist called Tessa Ekta Seenbabe, and, you know, there's sort
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of a bit of a crush developing from her on him. There's just this beautiful passage that I'd like. There are passages of time a person enters knowing unshakably that they will always retain a rare luster, one that will gleam more
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brightly as disappointments attach themselves to life. That was once me, they thought, anticipating the reminiscences of her future self. That was once me, plucking figs off branches and cramming them into my mouth while watching the sun glitter from the
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Quraían goes to the horizon across water as blue as ink and clear enough to see all the way to the rocks at the base of the cliffs, almost driven mad by the purple on my tongue, the blue in my side.
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A moment to understand sirens weren't creatures of the sea; they were the sea itself. There, Seenbabe laughed as though he'd heard her thoughts and said, "Look, your eyes have changed color. The Aegean Sea is in them now." Lightly touching her
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wrist at the jot of her bone, he added, "And the sun is in your skin." The metamorphosis of Vivien Rose Spencer. I did say it was beautiful, and it really is. I love this idea that in the
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first sentence there, the passages of time that you enter into knowing that you're going to remember that always. I think I remember at university, and it wasn't me, sadly. I wish I could say this, but somebody coined the term priest
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Alger-like nostalgia, but right, that you sort of know you're having us at a time, and it's a sort of very romantic. I doing this does turn out to be a hugely key moment for Vivien, doesn't it, in the book?
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And it dominates really the rest of the narrative, and she's on a quest of sorts into which the figs away, Vivien. Yeah, I don't give too much away. Yeah, we get a little bit. Wait, it starts with her
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in Turkey on a dig, and her father is friends with an archaeologist, a Turkish man called S&B, and, you know, although he's got certain ideas he has on what women should and shouldn't do, he's perfectly happy for his
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daughter to go off on this dig with this old friend of...
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skylax was to the best of anyone's knowledge as far as I can make out the first man from outside the subcontinent to travel here and write about it so the emperor darius sent him in 515 bc and he
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traveled either from Peshawar or from attack to a town called casbah virus which is one of those two places or somewhere around there and he traveled along one the tributaries of the Indus and then down the indus itself and wrote
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about it and what he wrote formed the Greek and Persian imagination about the subcontinent for you know but until Alexander's men went and gave a different view of things and he exaggerated widely and they were full of tales and one of my favorite is he
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described a tribe of India he was clearly very obsessed with the heat because a lot of things he wrote who how people dealt with the heat so he described a tribe Indians I suppose they were then who had
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ears like parasols oh no it was like winnowing fans and so you know when it got hot they were just to cool themselves by finding their ears and another with men a tribal man with very large feet and when it became really hot
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in the afternoon they would lie on their backs and hold a leg up and they're very large foot would form a shadow like a parasol which they would then sleep on them you know sometimes I wish that I
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have one of those I do I do like to joke about skylight said we complain now about western misrepresentation of this part of the world but it's been going on since then him with a Persian well he was well he was West to us he was from
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the westernmost bit of the Persian Empire so he was what is now Turkey so you know that gospel things but I give I invent for skylax an artifact which is a fig circlet a crown made of fig leaves
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and fig fruit which dereyes gives him in my account of things and and first they're seen be is obsessed with finding this because he's from the same part of the world as skylax and then viv when she is separated by
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the wall from 13b this fig circuit becomes her connection to him and she then starts to think she find it for various reasons in Peshawar and that's how the story moves her to Peshawar where she meets the gold brothers a
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theme that I really I mean I saw a lot in this book I thought if it was really fascinating and it's something that's always interested me about the Empire is the possibilities that the Empire has for reinvention sometimes that's
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involuntary in the case of poem girl he's you know of course he has to go and fight in world war one in Europe and this is something that he you know so it sort of invents him because he moves
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different place fights in deep which they call vipers right and I was very struck actually because just this week the British Library put online letters from Indian soldiers who fought in World War one and there are a million people
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from here who did and a lot of them were Punjabi Muslims literally a million three was literally a million people exactly not that's not a rough million and there were these extraordinary as I was reading a few excerpts from it that
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were published in The Guardian and there's this one that really struck me because it really reminded me of kögel that somebody said he wrote home to his family no man can return to the Punjab hole only the broken limbs can go back
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and that was of course the case if you got injured you could go back but there was this sort of emasculating effects of that it wasn't just you had to get injured you had to get very badly in
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there's a there's a book edited by David or me C which is Indian voices from the great wall which is a collection of the letters home and one of the complaints the soldiers have is that they feel that
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foreign that an Indian soldiers sent back into battle much more quickly or readily than an English soldier and that you have to have lost a limb an eye or your mind in order to be discharged from the Army and so you have men who have
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multiple wounded and keep getting sent back so this idea that you keep on fighting or if you do return home you've lost something of course you know if you're a novelist you can't help then taking that idea of loss as metaphor as
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well you know what what else is lost and for you know kiyoung loses an eye and then sees the world differently very much absolutely and there's also this wonderful section where he's in he's put so the wounded Indian soldiers some of
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them are put up in the Bryson pavilion which is a palace that was built by the Prince Regent in Brighton's my hometown and and it's sort of an Orientalist fantasy you know these onion domes by the sea in Brighton and this kind of
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mix of chinoiserie and indo-saracenic touches and all sorts of things I knew they wrote very fascinatingly the Indian soldiers in real life about this you know because they were in this fabulous palace and a young girl really really
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feels that as well he feels initially before some aspects become more sinister he feels quite privileged there are a lot of the soldiers letters when they're writing back and it is I mean I don't know how people have been to or seen
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pictures of the Brighton Pavilion but it's a really strange thing because as as alex says it's it is an oriental is fantasy and there are these domes and it looks in some way like the architecture of certain parts of India in fact at the
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Karachi lit festival a couple of weeks ago there was someone there who lives in Brighton and I took him to my hot tub Palace and he looked up he said oh that's what the Brighton Pavilion wants to look like pretty much it and so to
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imagine these Indian soldiers and they've they've been to her or you know somewhere they've been through the most devastating trench warfare and other things and then for practically all of them maybe all of them it is the first
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time that they actually come into the heart of the Empire which they've been living in is to arrive in Brighton in this weird mad place which is sort of looks like it wants to be India but really isn't and and the the British
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were very careful that they wanted you know the soldiers to feel well cared for because his men are girls go back into the battlefields so they had such things as there were seven different kitchens for different religions and different
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castes and which of course is also about the whole divide people up way of imperial rule but but the soldiers were largely very impressed and they were really amazed that the King had there was a rumor put about which the English
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had nothing to dissipate that this was the King's actual palace which he had given up for the soldiers to live there then of course royal family hadn't lived there for 100 years hundred years 100 years so so they were they were many
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of them were very impressed by what they saw many of them didn't want to go back and thought this was sort of a version of heaven but of course the great anxiety was now you had all these you
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know although injured still in many ways strapping military Indian men roaming around with these English women and that was a big no-no so they had been found ways to contain them so they came as these war heroes but then they had to be
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also kept away from English women and so there were these restrictions on their lives and and this mistrust there as well as this great bounty through the very curious mix of of things and it's kind of a wonderful mirror of that in
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the book in that of course in Peshawar it's the other way around but the you know you've got the Indian men try to stay away from the English woman and there's a different kind of women in their Booker's and just what we're on
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the pavilion actually you know what can i spring an extra paragraph on you sure cause I really do like this description and it will give you a sense I mean it is a pretty fabulous palace although bit bonkers a bargain and it's just that
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powerful for the looter this thought first came to him when he looked at the great chandelier in Ward one which was once the banqueting room its immensity handling from the claw of a silver dragon the long-tongued beast descended
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from copper banana leaves would seem to grow straight out of the painted foliage on the ceiling was it beautiful or ugly he couldn't decide but he knew that this one chandelier had more grandeur than all of Peshawar in time he came to see
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the chandelier as Empire the king was the silver dragon one single claw bearing the weight of smaller dragons glass lotus flowers a star of mirrors he repeated this to one of the English doctors and thereafter he was called
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upon whenever they were important visitors to explain that when he looked at the chandelier he gazed upon the glory of the king what he said was a source of Marvel equal if not exceeded by the fact that he said it in English
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when the supervising nurse was there to hear the compliment she'd wink at Caillou and place a finger on her lips she was the one who had taught him the English words he hadn't known polished the grammar of his sentences explained that
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the glass objects were lotus flowers and not replicas of the dusters was the staff used to clean the chandeliers it's a very funny book as well actually in places as well it's very moving and this theme of reinvention is also I mean as I
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said it goes both ways doesn't it I mean there's also this voluntary reinvention that live does of herself you know and they've actually back at home as well she's quite constrained her father's very auntie suffragette she's not particularly Pro suffragette is she a
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friend of hers is and she has quite a constrained life herself and very much constrained by a powerful father and actually it's by moving out by moving east that she finds her own freedom and identity yeah because of course you know
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patriarchy is the world's wrong longest-running Empire and it's everywhere and not going anywhere and and I was sort of interested in the way you have these two you know you have the English woman and Indian man and they're
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both you know they both sort of have above them in some sense Englishman yeah but but it works in very different ways and they both have different kinds of freedoms and constraints on them but I was particularly interested in the way
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you know it's much less interesting me to have the story where it's you know the English have freedom and the Indians are the ones who are colonized and but they also build you know K um starts being a loyal subject to the king and
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this starts the book very much you know her father's daughter she thinks suffragettes are a bad thing because her father things they're a bad thing her father you know his way of praising her daughters to say that she's
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you know she's as good as a boil she's almost as good as a boy and to treat her as the son he never had and she has to find a way out of that and that actually there's a problem there
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there's a problem in the way he's thinking about women and that she herself leads to think differently so so to me it is a story of these two parallel moves towards wanting a different structure of power in the
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world absolutely and I mean there's a kind of intersection as well of race and class and gender isn't there really in that I mean I'm often struck by this with one of my favorite real-life stories is the real story of the king
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and I I'm sure it's musical probably a lot of you've seen I'm still banned in Thailand but I think you're allowed to see it in Pakistan as far as I'm aware basically it's this story the musical is about an English lady governess who goes
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at the time was a closed court of Siam and kind of has this semi romantic entanglement with the king it's based on the real diaries of this woman called Anna Leonowens but actually there was a very interesting biography of her a few
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years ago when it turned out that she was not in fact a posh English governess if actually was an Indian woman who yes she was mixed-race she had an English father and Indian mother and but she had been brought up in Bombay and she
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reinvented herself because Thailand was a closed course I am at the time was a closed court nobody there had met her ever mess an English woman so she turned up and of course she didn't have the right accent
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she none of the right things and she was you know I had a coloured skin as far as they were concerned and yet because nobody they knew she just passed herself off as this English governess and if one
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just believed her I feel it they see remake of the King it's a very good story and it's sort of fascinating to me and I think in a sense I thought a bit of that with viv because although she's
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not doing that there is and it's a little exchange that I just wanted you to read between her and mr. Remmick who's the source of these the British resident isn't he in school agent sorry you should know that agent I know the
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difference political agent I suspect to use whether it's a princely space or not there you go but yeah he and he's trying to stop her going on a stick in Peshawar and she's keen to do it and she just plays
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on that difference if you have to read their exchange just then so she as I said she you know she goes to Peshawar because she wants to look for this artifact so she wants to join this dig and she's talking to Remick about it and
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he says miss Spencer I should strike a note of caution I know they've been women archeologists in Greece and Turkey even Egypt but this is Beshara but on men don't much like the idea of women don't much like the idea
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of women doing what don't much like the idea of women [Laughter] she thought of the Pathan soldier on the train the ease of the silence between them right at the end but who knew what he'd really been thinking she said are
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the English in India in the habit of having our behavior dictated by the natives huh well expressed he raised his glass to her to the dig season so you see it seemed just because viv herself actually is is really rather
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free from prejudice but she knows how just to play that with the British you know just to suggest to this English man that in fact he might be overruled by an Indian man and then suddenly it all changes so she's playing on those
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differences rather wonderfully and actually just to add to that because it picks up on something you just said I think if I can find this yes this later on you say that she and it's an observation that Gayle makes that she
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walks through the walled city as if she had more right to it than any man of Peshawar and that's something isn't it where the English kind of assume this belonging yeah because it is complicated that she's out there it's not you know
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much as she is it's wonderful the way you even that it is kind of her own reinvention but it's you know it's complicating the effect that has on the local population is not I mean it's not without impact no it is complicated I
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mean she's a single English woman who's you know gone off to Peshawar and you keep him at the the English but in particular thing the only reason for a young single English woman to have turned up in Peshawar is because she's
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looking for a husband and she turns up in summer and you know mostly English a girl gone up to to Shimla so the the ones who remain keep saying go up to Shimla that's where the parties are you
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know that's where the husband hunting is going on and she's there for this archaeological dig and getting really annoyed by the whole thing and and her refuge becomes this young boy energy but she is you know you said
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she's free of prejudices she's not entirely she just comparatively yeah so compared to REMIC she is but you know she's a she is a woman of her time I didn't it was one of the difficulties with with learning to love her because I
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had to write her but she's a woman so smart and she sees through most prejudices and therefore I wanted her to be able to see through all of them but there is a level at which she is an
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Englisher on the 20th century she does believe the English are superior and that knew the best thing you can do for a native is give them an English sort of education and then they'll get you know as good as you can be while not being
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English but she believes very much that you know other people can aspire to Englishness and pretty much get there but but there is you know to her the English way is the best way so it was sort of a difficult thing to contend
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with in her it was odd I found it and I'm disturbed by this and myself I found it much easier to love to whom despite his difficult attitude towards women then I did to love viv with her less difficult attitude towards the
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natives you know because I I think I kept thinking well you should know better because you figured out most of it but it's a very present trait in British imperialism particularly kind of you know the sort of older well-meaning
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maternal istic type Lord Macaulay type is the idea that actually you know you're going to enrich the natives and there's I mean as you said you know she can be to her father almost as a good as a boy and they can be almost as good as
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a white person you know there's this kind of near miss and you know I think that's something that you just you see so much in the British attitude especially in the 19th century is this idea that it's actually you know a kind
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of you see in India and you actually don't see it anywhere else in the Empire which is interesting it's the only place really where there was this attempt to educate the natives and you know it's incredibly patronizing and paternalistic
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and now we don't have a lot of criticisms of it I'm quite sure but at the time this was completely different from how the British retreat tree ever treated the natives of say America or Australasia or Africa or
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anywhere else and I think I mean my thinking on it is always because the British came to India and India was at the time much greater than England so they were not contending with the same situation you know they were contending
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with bars Empire it was a very different picture I mean this you know one things that that she one of my problems in this books I've written several drafts of it and so as I'm about to I think cook from
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it I'm thinking does I actually leave that line in this region so who knows some were at some point there was a reference to her hearing a gentleman called Woolley who's a natural archaeologist and if you read his his
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autobiography called spadework which is a lovely title he he says it's really important to watch your workmen when you're digging in the dark corners of the world sort of Mesopotamia wherever he says because when you when you watch
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them you see man as he must have been you know in another in primitive times basically these primitive people and so lives way of being a little better than woolly but not quite good enough is she so reflects from this comment that you
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know if you're watching the natives you're watching you know pre-modern man or ancient man and she says well but you know yeah that's probably true but why shouldn't there be a Herodotus here you know so if you're going to have the
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bishop you know the Indians of the 20th century are reflecting ancient men they can reflect the great ancient men and not just the primitive you know gave dwellers to lift weights when improvement yeah I mean she does have
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that and she's got a romantic fascination with it which of course a lot of people did but actually in the seeds of that that's another kind of another thing I sort of saw coming out of the book is how actually the you know
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something I often think again about the British Empire is that it really did in India really you know it did very carefully sow the seeds of its own destruction and part of the way it did that was by this kind of Macaulay
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idea of Education because of course what happened when you educated these people to believe in these strong Western values of freedom and democracy is that they wanted freedom oxy and they didn't really want the empire anymore and of
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course that was exactly the education that Jenner and their even Gandhi and all these men had and why they started to have ideas like that and similarly you know you say the first of all that education kind of you know leads to
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people thinking well held in a minute why shouldn't I have that too but then you also see that with colum in that although he isn't going through the same classical education he goes through this this experience of being this honored
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King solider of being part of something you know and part of an important thing and and then the rewards aren't the same and he is different and he starts thinking hold on a minute yeah you know yeah but what he does like
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is loyalty Brotherhood something to fight for yes and so it becomes a question for him of finding those things in a context that makes sense to who he is and that's was when he encounters Carnival of Al Holland and suddenly he makes sense to
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himself in the world hmm are you going to make me Francis we had a conversation with her she said my challenge as a bridge it's pronounced is it who died we give you points but yeah I mean he
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joins and he finds a kind of very different way of expressing his kind of those feelings precisely and of kind of channeling this and it's interesting to me I mean he does you know he joins this nonviolent movement and then finds
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frustrations in it yeah again a complicated picture it's always complicated bitching and you know setting up an unarmed army is a complicated idea any movements you join it's going to be complicated anything you join once you leave the world of
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ideas and ideals and you have to you know then enter world particularly where it's in the world of realpolitik you know you're going to come into all kinds of trouble which he does which we're not going to give away there because it's
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really Commerce extraordinary action in that part of the book and I really don't want to split people but I really do recommend you buy it although I think you might have sold out quite a lot of copies here I want to UM see if anyone
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in the audience has any questions actually possible now if it mommy and I can't see anything so if you could bring the house lights off the back of the house lights up so that we can see who's got their hands up I could see one in
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the front why don't we start with this lady here in the middle of the front and I'm sorry I will try and some people further back when we get the lights up a bit my question is that how do you
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select your themes for your novels how do I select my teams I don't select things that sort of it's always interested me I started a novel linking and while writing it I discover what I'm obviously interested in because it sort
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of comes out so you know this book ends up being in many ways but competing loyalties I had no idea what that was although someone pointed out to me this morning that the last novel burned shadows was also about competing loyalty
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so it's clearly an issue some kind of maybe why I tend to I mean for me the novel then you know one of the ways in which novelists create stories is we create a story about how we came to
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write a particular novel in a way that makes sense but actually there are lots of different impulses that go in which sort of come together but one of the things that I think was a pretty crucial was in 2009 when burn
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chad is my last novel who had just been published and I was in Karachi and then as now you had bombs going off every day in Peshawar and I would wake up in the morning and read the newspapers and
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there's a bomb going off and I was had just published a novel which started in Nagasaki in 1945 and I remember thinking I have a much clearer picture of Nagasaki in 1945 then I do have Peshawar in any time period I don't know if this
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is as true in Lahore as it is in Karachi I suspect it is it's very easy to live your life there and know very little about Peshawar I mean Lahore and Karachi tend to have some you know awareness of each other
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but Peshawar gets talked about almost as though it's a different country and I realize I don't have images of it I don't have a sense of place and if I can have a sense of place of Nagasaki then I
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need you know I felt like should just find out more about this place so I just started reading I didn't necessarily know if it's going to lead to a novel and I very quickly got incredibly drawn in by the ancient history of it it is
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this fact which we should all know it's recently named by UNESCO the world's oldest living City which means no other city in the world has been continuously inhabited for longer and we still don't know how long it's been because there's
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a excavation site Gore country which is at the edge of the of the old city and they if you go there there's I don't know how many people have there's a very very deep pit and they're just ceased
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rasa's of history and you see objects sort of that as I keep digging further down they they find yet more evidence of in habitation and more evidence it just goes back you know 1,000 2,000 died in how many millennia and when I was there
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they'd run out of fun so they'd stopped again so they said we have no idea how much further it goes back how how long this city has been inhabited and extraordinary that we don't have the funds for that you know find out how
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deep is our own history think you would put some funds into that maybe Imran Khan's government could be told to this ancient history and then reading once man called skylax so that was one of the stories and and
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then the other thing was some years earlier I had read a book called the Pathan unarmed by Malecha Banerjee which was about hood I had met girl in Hana Blanca Farhan and I thought actually you know that's a that was another story
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that seemed interesting to me because we always even you know in this country if we talk about the purse Tunes it's you know oh well this military warlike people and their you know any chance to get into a fight and and here you had
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this incredible political movement which was about the opposite of that and which had this very complex in wealth without philosophy that came out of both Islam and the Pashtun code which kuffar Khan had put together and I thought that's a
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really interesting story as well then I had to figure out how to marry archaeology to the hood I hid with God basically yeah and I mean that's interesting isn't it that actually has that been adopted from the kind of
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racist British view of the Marshall races the idea that there were or is that a pre-existing stereotype do you think of the batons of this warlike people it's dangerous if you if you read the really ancient texts aren't you the
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Chinese travelers who were you know in sort of you know 300 BC or whenever traveling around and they'd speak with the people of the you know of the Gandhara region and sort of you know this very gentle disposition but you
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have Herodotus writing about them as being a very fierce warlike people so I mean there were clearly you know you have in Herodotus the the people the Patsy Ike who if I mean you know maybe not the Pathan because we don't know
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what when the tribes came of the people of the area were described by the bhakti I could describe as a fierce warlike people but then you have of course Gandhara which was great Buddhist civilization I mean I think a lot of us get pretty
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warlike you've led a Greek stand up once in our land well I mean every every Empire went through this also this idea that no one has ever defeat I mean every Empire came through and defeated them in the British were the first the British
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were the first who want to defeat it and I think and who were defeated and therefore I think created you know the the idea that they are the first of all like people who no one can defeat to say
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that's why I think beats us because they're that good you came to the point that I was just about to make and I just want to commend you for sort of breaking from the narrative of talking about we
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shower and brush stones from the reference point of terrorism so thank you very much and how much pressure do you feel as a young Pakistani writer to continue with that narrative of talking about Pakistan from this reference point
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of just unending terrorism and violence I don't feel any pressure I mean you know there's this very peculiar notion up in the world which I wish we would disabuse ourselves of that that if you are a Pakistani writer then there are
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people sitting on your shoulder saying you must write about terrorism and nine it's nonsense it's total nonsense if you look at the books that I've done where in the last few years is Daniel Moines Dean's book about terrorism was a case
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of exploding mangoes about the Taliban you know I mean why why we get so hung up on this idea that that Park sign right is somehow being forced to write these things all publishing houses one books that they can sell they want
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something to be able to sell a good book I think can sell you know and and as a writer this is the other thing if you're writing a novel if I'm writing a novel that is the thing I'm going to be
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obsessed with and I mean the word obsessed properly it's the when you finish your novel a key that my brain doesn't know what to do because about three years there have been particular subjects that every day of my life
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probably every hour I'm in somewhere the other thinking about and drawing connections between and when you're working at that intimate level with a novel in that degree of obsession this question of we know what the outside world wants of you really does fall away
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and it becomes you're following you're trying to make the story work you really caught up and trying to make the story work and and the other thing of course is the novel changes shape so this novel was going to start in 1930 and in 2009
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you know and it was going to end up with Peshawar blowing up and and then I don't know actually that's not what this novel wants to be it wants to start in 1915 and end in 1930 and in the end you you
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do what the novel wants otherwise you run into huge trouble because then you you start writing a book that isn't working and then you have to stop doing that I'm Myron and I'm a lecturer in English at Edwards College I belong to
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Peshawar and I really enjoyed these few readings that you just read from your book and I just can't wait to go back home and start reading your novel my question is regarding the research that you did what kind of research you did
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before on Peshawar before writing before starting off with your novel yeah the research wasn't just before me I was researching all the way through it's one of the great ironies that the best place to be in order to write a book about
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Peshawar in 1950 1930 is not be shower necessarily but London because the colonial archives and the Brits were extraordinary record keepers and you know even when I went to Peshawar I went for a very short time and I went almost
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with blinders on because I didn't want to see too much of contemporary Peshawar that would disrupt my images of 1950 1930 so I went to the music I'm going to say this every chance I get to speak in
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person the Peshawar museum is one of the greatest things in this country and anyone who hasn't been that go there I mean this the Gandhara on display will just make your hair stand on it's just unbelievably beautiful what we
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have here so I went to the museum and I went to the bits of the old city and looked around but largely wasn't watching but the British Library has literally thousands of photographs of colonial-era Bashara they have copies of the
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Archaeological Survey of India frontier circle every year so you could find out all the details of what was happening in the archaeological world and the latter half of this book is taken up by the massacre at Pisa fawni in 1930 and there
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was a lot of research going into those records and some research which turned up staffs of primary research which turned up quite astonishing things which weren't in any of the history texts I was reading I mean again they may well
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be in hindi KO or Pashto text but in the English language text the version of events that that was there didn't include some really crucial stuff which I only found because I went you to the original source and read thousands and
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thousands I'm deaf you know these files this massive of all correspondence about this Massacre you have the Congress Inquiry reports you have the British reports and then you have the British report on the Congress inquiry report and all the private letters written so
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there was sort of you know great depths who detailin and further for the archaeology there was you know I mean the library I mean the British Library is extraordinary for that in the end the British Museum and and I did go with a
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friend to Greece and then sail across Turkey just you know where I got to see the precise blue that vero Spencer speaks of there that's a nice picture for search rather than reading birth thousand page dusty files but you can
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actually really tell in the before I go to the next question you know as a historian she says smoothly it is amazing in the research you've done and you obviously did a lot of research into the classical part as well
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yeah was it kind of I mean how many more books will come out of this I actually slightly want to ask but I'm not gonna really avoid spoilers here but there's still some stuff I want to know at the
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end I'm hoping you might write a sequel well this is the thing is that is the book was as I said really supposed to be 1932 19 2009 I wrote the 1930 section and I thought and I need a little bit so that I
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actually wrote short 1915 section and these were 30 page sections so I wrote 1915 1930 1948 1967 I was halfway through 1981 and I thought this book is not working and so I went and deleted about a year's worth of work and told
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the entire novel is in 1915 and 1930 but there were in my head I have I've written in fact not just my head I've written their later lives bits of them so so I don't know maybe one day yes a
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story will come up now the novel these are characters he'll seriously fall in love with I'm gonna see you'll all want this um see I have a question yes um since you mentioned that you were in Karachi and you did not have a sense of
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place of what Peshawar is really like and all of that um you know not just prejudices on terrorism but you know prejudice in in us as people is very deeply rooted it's at the prejudice of one kind or another and it's not
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necessarily related to politics I mean I've been in various cities of Pakistan for two in two and a half years and you know sometimes I find themselves telling people that Karachi is not like that or that Lahore is not like that and you
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know for lack of a better answer I never even put the assumption that it's not like that because people want to listen to what it is like related to politics it just wanders just is not due to say that people are nice
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that they are there are people that are not prejudiced do you think that you know you also write novels in you know for for answering any set of prejudices - you see it that way I'm I'm always very happy if someone comes up to me and
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says I read your book and it changed the way I thought about whoever or whatever it's not why I write because I don't I don't think a novelist should write with the idea that you are in a position to
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educate the world am i right to try and educate myself you know I there's this line that writers are often told write what you know I think this is a piece of advice that should be put against the wall and shot right now I
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don't think any novel it should write but what they know why bother you write as a purse of discovery there's a wonderful Irish writer called colum McCann and he said I think I think maybe what you should say is right
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toward what you wanted to know and that to me makes sense is you know it's that it's not that I wanted to educate the world about Bashara right so I need to know I want to find out and writing a
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novel becomes the best way I know of really delving into a subject and getting involved with it so so I do it for myself and I did learn things I mean I don't think I was filled with prejudices against Bashara or the person
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but I I still there was so much new that I discovered in there that hasn't formed the way I think about things yeah I think the wonderful thing for the rest of us is we just get to piggyback on
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your amazing knowledge and just pick one thing which is really fascinating is that of course that a lot of research went into your book online of course you read lots of books and documents and all that and of course with Alex being there
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who's a published bright writer - of history and I was wondering how do you think and put and it's a question to both of you that your writing should inform academic writing on history because of course when you read the novel you learn about
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a lot about history but when you read traditional history you know people get bored so how can we actually and of course you know there were you know Alex's book of course I hope you have already read that
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Indian summer is very readable I could mention this that you know I I used Aleks book in a class and people said oh it's much easier to read this than traditional history books so what do both of you think can be done to the art
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of writing that we can integrate you know a novel and a history book and actually improve improve learning what what can actually be done so that people don't get bored by reading even a novel for that matter well I mean you know
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Alex writes histories you know she-dummy and I'm I'm a novelist so I put fiction in there and what I says is right history in a way that is I mean Indian some is among everything else very funny but it's it's very funny in giving you
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actual history and it's you know I suppose it's I don't know whether it came out of the new journalism school which was to take make journalism use you know things that people had been using in in fiction and bring in story
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and character but you know not imaginary one so I think you know there's there none of those different kinds of I don't know why I'm answering this rather than Alex but I'm just going to answer it as a reader that there are different kinds
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of writing about history there is an academic writing which is much drier in tone although I don't have a problem with I mean I think it has its place at you know for for my novel I went and
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read history books which were useful and sometimes you want just extract information I don't care go that much how it's given to me but then you have right Zach Alex who will give you the history and you know they've done all
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the research it's a serious book of history but it's written in a manner that is also entertaining and appealing and of course I would like to claim that's elements that history took from fiction but maybe Alex would not
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view with that I mean from from I don't mean from fiction in terms of making things up I just mean this that a certain style of writing we try not to make things up in on my fighting offense it is frowned
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upon to do that but actually I mean although yeah that's not under it also what you did because as he said you did a lot of primary research for this book I mean I certainly learned stuff from this I haven't known I mean there's a
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bit with Sarah lefkara who was governor of n WFP is it there was and I really hadn't known about his was I don't think anyone had known there something with Olaf Guerra being involved with something that happens around the
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massacre and I read many history books snipe didn't find this no I had never and I and I spoke to Mullica Banerjee who's you know written luck of the year and I said this particular thing do you know about and she said she said I
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haven't actually encountered she's when you say it it sounds right with what was going on the times but I didn't know it now I didn't know LCC you can so yeah it was it was likely you know in these
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thousands and thousands pages because I was looking for it I suppose this the other thing I mean okay it's not gonna give a way to say this too much ed when I was researching first of all this Massacre their eyewitness reports in the
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Congress inquiry committee report this the actual report itself and then at the end there hundreds of pages of eyewitnesses reports and I was reading those and a few of the eyewitnesses mentioned that after the massacre the English took away the bodies because
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they want to hide the evidence of their crimes and I thought oh that's really interesting but for a novelist the disappeared body is a really good plot point so I thought I really want this to have happened so I can use this in
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fiction but when I look at the Congress the actual final Congress supported didn't mention it and I thought it obviously was just one of those rumors because the Congress was sticking it to the British as far as they could in that
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report but they didn't mention this detail so I thought they must have discounted it they must have found out it's not right and so I put it aside but I really wished it had happened for the sake of the novel and then in a later
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draft house I was stuck on plot I couldn't get beyond a certain point I thought let me go back to research and I went back and did more research and more research and found out and this was where Olaf
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Guerra came and that actually the bodies were disposed of and there was a very particular reason why Congress didn't put it in its report and that was you know it was this you know it's his extraordinary motor and sitting the
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British Library in this rather if anyone knows the you know the what's called Asia and which is cool now that Asia and Africa studied issues absolutely study row it's a rather dark room and it's filled with very earnest looking mainly
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older they see academics looking at really inch like these ancient tombs which are falling apart and you know tiny minut handwriting they're doing really serious stuff these are my people her people and and in the middle of this
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I I you know was reading and reading and just found this he you want the government officials closing a letter from Cairo talking about what he did that day and I just I mean I just stopped tonight almost stopped breathing
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yeah I couldn't be able I was reading and I sort of had to read it three times and looked up and you know everyone's carrying around doing their dingy things and I want to say and it's fine you feel
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really pleased that you've discovered this awful thing that really happened yeah completely delighted because I needed it to happen in order for the plot to move along and suddenly the entire plot made sense because I could just follow the history yeah and it
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doesn't you know this exactly shows that actually there is a process of exchange between these sides you know it's not that strict in that respect although we don't make things up but you mean you didn't have to which was great Boeing in
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Cairo particularly because I'd always seen him as a fairly benign figure you know this is a guy who wrote the book on the Patong and he was you know supposed to be very into it and then yeah absolutely horrific anyway so I mean
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yeah even more resistive but I didn't have to have a one-way quick question there's a gentleman for it was anxiously holding up his hand hi sorry I just something that you said just struck me which as you mentioned earlier that you
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invented the fake circle edge for skylax but you needed this thing to as part of the process for the plot to move forward so what's the line between creating something in history and and then sticking to the actual version
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events and how do you make that choice it's a really good question and it's something that I had to work on I wasn't going to accuse actual people of a crime they didn't commit I was going to say the the British
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administration of 1930 disposed these bodies I mean there was enough L said they'd done that day but I wasn't going to ascribe crime to someone I felt I'm sort of morally problematic but to invent an artifact you know he must have
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had and also the artifact is based on the fact that the person I was reading something on also head where by the Persians and there's a particular kind of circlet which was given to heroes and men who slay monsters and I thought of
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course skylax would have been given one these and he's described by Herodotus as the most trusted of derailleurs so so actually there was even some historical basis there that I thought it only makes sense that if such a thing existed
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skylax would have got it but then I did invent a whole you know historical backstory to to the actual fixed circuit and I think it's much easier I felt much easier but inventing stuff in 515 BC I'm there I mean really
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you know you know actually most was India stuff is soulful skylax indeed sighs yeah John I was making stuff up yes so yes it was that and also because I thought was really important to talk about that Massacre which you know I
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didn't learn in school in Karachi I learned for Julia Malabar but I didn't learn okay Suhani and I thought also because that particular bit of the history hadn't been told to my knowledge it seemed more important than to get it
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right I think that's propagates bring us to the end of our time I seem thrilled thank you so much [Applause] I could just say before you run to lunch I'm just going to say that Carmela will be signing books in hall two and I so
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recommend this book I'll be doing say to you but please buy hers first cuz I and we'll see you there thank you so much for coming everyone enjoy the rest of the festival
Topics:A God in Every StoneCarla PowerLahore Literary Festivalhistorical fictionarchaeologyWorld War OneBritish IndiaPashtun brotherswomen archaeologistsempire history
