2012 Man Booker Prize Longlist: Insights from Andre Brink and Tan Twan Eng
The Man Booker Prize has initiated an “author insight” series on their website which takes the form of mini-interviews with the Man Booker Dozen.
The series, which is being released in the run-up to the announcement of the shortlist on 11 September, asks the kind of questions that will appeal to readers, like “What are you reading?” and “What are you working on next?”.
In part one of the series, André Brink cites his visit to a friend’s farm near Cape Town as the plot source for Philida, and Tan Twan Eng, longlisted for The Garden of Evening Mists, comments on the representation of Malaysia in fiction:
Where did you come across the story of Philida?
André Brink: I visited my friend Mark Solms, vintner and professor of neuropsychology on his beautiful farm between the towns of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek near Cape Town, and learned from him that almost two centuries ago the place had been owned by the brother of one of my ancestors, one Cornelis Brink, whose son Francois had had a long relationship with a young slave woman, Philida. This triggered the writing of the book: in a country like South Africa, how could I not feel driven to write about it?
Is the Malaysian Emergency under-represented in fiction?
Tan Twan Eng: It is. I’ve only come across Han Suyin’s … And the Rain My Drink, written in the late 1950s. There are a number of non-fiction books on the Emergency, however, and one of them, Noel Barber’s The War of The Running Dogs, is concise, well-researched, objective, and reads like a novel.
Book details
- The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Book homepage
EAN: 9781905802623
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- Philida by André Brink
EAN: 9781846557040
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Apr
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