Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 30. Fatima Bhutto, The Hour of the Wolf
96 Plays9 days ago
In this episode I talk to Fatima Bhutto about her book The Hour of the Wolf (2026) from Daunt Books.
Fatima Bhutto is the author of the novels The Runaways and the Women’s Prize for Fiction-longlisted The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, and the non-fiction New Kings of the World and Songs of Blood and Sword, which deals with her father’s murder and the Bhutto family’s history in Pakistani politics. Bhutto’s journalism and essays have appeared in the New Statesman, New York Times and Guardian, and elsewhere.
Episode Notes:
- Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House; Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion; Jill Ciment, Half a Life and Consent; Melissa Febos, 'In Defense of Navel Gazing'; Julie Myerson, The Lost Child.
Book Recs:
- Tareq Baconi, Fire in Every Direction and Hamas Contained
- Helen Garner, This House of Grief
- Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
- Hiba Abu Nada, 'I Grant You Refuge'
Follow the show on Instagramand subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here. Follow Fatima on Instagram too.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and anyone that wants to know how texts get made.
Conversation with Fatima Bhutto
00:00:10
Speaker
Today I talk to Fatima Bhutto about her book The Hour of the Wolf, which is out with Daunt Books. We're going to talk about the very opening today.
00:00:20
Speaker
Fatima is the author of the novels The Runaways and the Women's Prize for fiction long-listed Shadow of the Crescent Moon and the non-fiction New Kings of the World and Songs of Blood and Sword, which deals with her father's murder and the Bhutto family's history in Pakistani politics.
00:00:37
Speaker
Bhutto's journalism and essays have appeared in The New Statesman, New York Times, Guardian and elsewhere.
00:00:45
Speaker
Fatima, thank you so much for joining me. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having
Personal Connections and Close Reading
00:00:49
Speaker
me. And nice to see Coco with you as well. There she is. but You sent me this book a little while ago and I inhaled it in like a day.
00:01:02
Speaker
And I really feel like I know both you and the dog in a very particular particular way. So it's quite nice to see you both on the screen. yeah today we're talking about the Hour of the Wolf and we're going to talk about the opening. So listeners, go get your copies. But before we do that, I ask everyone how you feel about close reading as a practice or an activity, like what your relationship to it is um I think we're all really close readers naturally, instinctively, because we're looking for different things, signs ourselves.
00:01:32
Speaker
clues, answers. So I enjoy it, but I need to be brought back to it. So that's why it's especially fun to do this. Sometimes it takes the years to understand exactly why something worked out the way it did or what you meant to do exactly.
00:01:51
Speaker
um and other times it's right there on the page. So, so now I'm excited. Good. I, yeah. And I'm especially interested in close reading different, different kinds of genre, I guess. Like I think people were expecting me to just do poetry or something, but I'm like, I really want to read memoir and other kinds of writing. I talked about Sarah Ahmed's new book, for example.
00:02:13
Speaker
so I'm interested in paying, doing that kind of close reading, but with other kinds of prose that people like, oh, that's just memoir or something. As though that isn't constructed. and Yeah, yeah. Everything is. And I think, it to me, it's so kind of magic the way any piece of writing comes together.
00:02:29
Speaker
so much of what is unsaid is there. So much of what you are trying to convey, you know, it's little explosive forms present. And of course, you know, the secrets that you're hoping will convey something without being too transparent.
Themes of Fatima's Book
00:02:47
Speaker
And now Cocoa Marking. So only took two minutes. Do you want to read the opening then and we can maybe then start talking about it Okay. One day i see a wild deer.
00:03:01
Speaker
It is evening, the second month of lockdown in the spring of the pandemic. I am outside in my friend MC's garden with my pregnant dog, Koko.
00:03:13
Speaker
She is days away from delivering her very first. But she doesn't look like she is pregnant at all. Her stomach is almost concave. And aside from a week when she was ravenous, her appetite is delicate.
00:03:26
Speaker
Her mood's strange. The vets in this Oxfordshire village where my best friend, Allegra, and i have the attempt to ride out what we imagine will be the only wave of this virus won't give us an appointment.
00:03:40
Speaker
It's not an emergency, they tell me on the phone. We are only seeing emergencies during COVID. No one knows what COVID it is yet. None of us know how to behave.
00:03:52
Speaker
What does the virus have to do with a pregnant dog?
00:03:57
Speaker
My dog's stomach is hollow. There is stillness when I place my hand on her belly. It's not a phantom pregnancy. She's had one of those before. We had a scan and it confirmed that she was carrying a litter of puppies.
00:04:13
Speaker
But something doesn't feel right. She sounds fine, these new vets who we don't know and have never met, tell me on the phone. We are not from Oxford.
00:04:24
Speaker
We are far away from home. Beyond the lockdown and this new terrain, I'm in further limbo because I've spent nearly a decade waiting for a man who has made promise after promise to me and diligently, and with impressive commitment, has broken them all.
00:04:41
Speaker
We are both unmarried. He confesses that he has never met a woman who could settle down with Uncle Mim. But I am the first woman he has wanted to build a life with.
Personal Narratives in Memoir Writing
00:04:51
Speaker
But I come from a public family and have chosen to be a writer, part the life of a private civilian.
00:04:58
Speaker
He has his reasons. Thank you so much for reading that. I think there's opening and this paragraph goes on, but I thought that's like a nice place to stop. This opening kind of carries all of the things that the memoir is carrying in a way, the opening of wildness, you've got cocoa, you've got displacement.
00:05:18
Speaker
the man, and something about your publicness and who you are. Like, within three paragraphs, you really kind of contained the whole book. And I, I mean, I want to cheekily ask, you when did you write this?
00:05:30
Speaker
Was this early? Was this a kind of retroactive? Do you remember? It's also got friendship. It's also got allegory in there. So wrote it really at the beginning.
00:05:43
Speaker
When I first sat down to write, this is how I began writing. Minus the man. And that's sort of the story of the Hour of the World, which is that I tried to write it without him.
00:05:55
Speaker
And I tried to write it without the secret. And didn't make as much sense. I mean, maybe it didn't make any sense. And I tried adding different things and, you know, concentrating more on friendship or concentrating more on my my life, my past.
00:06:14
Speaker
And until I put in that paragraph of I've spent a decade nearly waiting, um the book just didn't come together. he That's really interesting to me because they, the pieces you'll feel so braided well as though, as though you were kind of holding them all at the same time. So that's really fascinating to know that bit, it kind of opened up stuff for you in that book.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the pieces were always there. was just holding one of them back and you know, It doesn't work, does it? I mean, like, if you think of an electronic box with all those funny wires and the different colors, you know, one of them not connecting to another means you don't have operations, and nothing happens.
00:06:59
Speaker
and And it was very much the same because the story of why friendship is so necessary And why friendship means so much to us. You know, it's connected to a coercive and controlling and really unhappy relationship.
00:07:15
Speaker
um The story of Coco, the story of what it is that animals have and give to us so freely, know, their love and their tenderness and their loyalty is is wonderful, but you you need you need the opposite. You need the cold and calculating and conditional relationship, I think, to really see it sometimes.
00:07:36
Speaker
So when I did, when I felt ready and I felt I was able to to write the book the way it had to be written, it was pretty easy in a strange way to go back and just thread that missing bidding.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I mean, there's probably an obvious reason why you didn't want to write about the man, but or were there various kind of were there literary reasons as well as kind of personal emotional ones? oh Well, really, you know, it was a question of shame.
00:08:05
Speaker
It was... a question of shame and barely wanted to admit to myself that I had been badly treated, that I allowed myself to be badly treated.
00:08:18
Speaker
And also it was very difficult for me to reconcile the fact that I had been told and I believed that I am a you know strong woman whatever you want to, you know, empowered woman, tough person, difficult, whatever, all of those things.
00:08:33
Speaker
And i think that discourse was so pernicious because it didn't allow me to see that such a horrible thing could happen to me because I was just told that it doesn't happen to women like that.
00:08:46
Speaker
So I just accepted it sort of without question. And having to understand that it happens to all kinds of people and it happens to everyone, as it turns out, at least that's what it feels like.
00:08:57
Speaker
was was a big thing to to grapple with. I wrote it in, I wrote the man in being uncomfortable and being ashamed and and feeling distressed at having to admit this about myself.
00:09:11
Speaker
And it's really only since the book came out that I i don't feel that shame anymore, that I've been able... to surrender it. And I think part of surrendering it is just facing it finally and just admitting.
00:09:24
Speaker
And then it just kind of dissolves. It's quite strange. just The act of saying it out loud releases it. It's not my burden anymore. yeah yeah It's kind of given out into the world through through the the writing.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I suppose there are, in literature, there are there were enough instances of women who have been very brave and spoken about all manner of things they are ashamed of with a lot of depth and control so I wasn't really a literary reason because I because I had been moved by it by writing like that um it was really more just yeah yeah no just yeah I just think of books like Carmen Maria Machado's Memoir in the Dreamhouse, which, yeah you know, a personal problem becomes a kind of literary or aesthetic question, right? How does one begin to approach a horrific thing? Like she uses genre, right, as the method, like the form through which, but so i was just really interested in how yeah how are you were approaching that kind of missing piece, as you were saying, with the kind of silent bit, which then then becomes so interlocked with the story of Coco.
00:10:36
Speaker
Do you know what I, um of course, I think In the Dream House is an extraordinary book, and I read it during this period and was really moved by it, of course. Even then I couldn't connect myself to it.
00:10:50
Speaker
But I remember reading Annie O'Neill before the Nobel. I remember reading A Simple Passion and thinking, oh my God, when I read that, and it was after the relationship had ended, when I read that, I just thought,
00:11:07
Speaker
ah I was really floored by it.
Challenges in Writing Truth
00:11:10
Speaker
And when I had to go back in and think about how to thread in this whole narrative into the story, which of course it was an integral part of, it just, there was no literary way to do it.
00:11:25
Speaker
There was no imaginative, know, lyrical way to do it. I just had to put it out and it's like pure, simple and actually kind of ugly factual form.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah. Super ugly and and unexpected in places in the book. Like I think this opening, you know, you start with the deer and Coco's phantom pregnancy or not.
00:11:52
Speaker
and And her body as well as your body. And then COVID, like already, that's like quite a lot of things to like balance in like a few sentences. And then the line, I think that's really interesting, you put beyond the lockdown in this new terrain, I am in further limbo.
00:12:06
Speaker
I'm like, ooh, further limbo, like a whole other kind of limbo, right? Spent nearly a decade waiting for a man, even waiting for a man, not just like with a man, but like wait, like he's not even arrived even in his hideous presence right there's just ah the beyond I think is a really interesting word beyond the lockdown not alongside the lockdown or within the but beyond as though it's this whole other realm of something this pressure right I think it's just really interesting language there
00:12:38
Speaker
It did feel like that as well, because i think aside from the the universal confusion and panic and stress of where are we and what does this mean, which I had, had also been essentially gaslit into staying or in a relationship with this man for an incredibly long time.
00:12:58
Speaker
I wanted more than anything in the world to to be a mother, to have children, and was constantly stalled and delayed. And manipulators.
00:13:10
Speaker
And so for me, besides the fact of a pandemic and a lockdown, I just thought, you've got to be kidding me. oh Now this thing that I am, I pursuing, I'm hunting almost in a way.
00:13:24
Speaker
I'm blocked. And this is going to be a delay. I have no way to negotiate. So so it really did feel like beyond. It didn't really feel like alongside. Because all the other alongsides for me were manageable.
00:13:38
Speaker
you know the when do I see my friends again I knew I was I'm going to see them again you know when can I go back to the old life why well I knew we would in some way or we wouldn't we would adapt but you know so it didn't really feel like alongside it felt like that's another thing yeah yeah and I I'll jump back up to the beginning of the passage in a minute but even that sentence like I have spent nearly a decade waiting for a man who has made promise after promise to me and diligently and with impressive commitment, comma, like that's all one breath, right? Like you have to really wait for that comma, has broken them all, right? and you have that real kind of devastating, the kind of after that pause, as though it is this real like extended feeling.
00:14:20
Speaker
new sentence we are both unmarried full stop like there's little spike there then he confesses that he has never met a woman he etc etc he has his reasons like another short up sentence like you've added in there but you know even at the level of the prose you can feel something happening beneath the surface if you like right kind of the you waiting for him and the promise after promise is us waiting in that sentence as well right we have to kind of you don't tell us immediately what what this thing is like we clearly this man is not pleasant at this point in the chapter but we don't quite know what that is right what the texture of that is yeah yeah that's incredible isn't it because i didn't it's not that i set out to paint him as unpleasant from your first glance at him and in fact but when i was writing it it was really important to me
00:15:15
Speaker
that I wrote about him fairly. So I felt whatever I was going to say about the pain, I also had to mention what was attractive, what was compelling about him, what was, you know, not unpleasant.
00:15:32
Speaker
But it's not possible to hide some things. i mean, I think that's such the magic of of writing, isn't it? That no matter what you intend to do, and some things are really out of your hands.
00:15:44
Speaker
And Waiting for a Man, I mean, just to go back to your earlier point there, really, again, there could have been no other word because it wasn't building anything. It wasn't surviving anything together. It wasn't wasn't anything really. And so much of it felt like a ghost story. you know And i did try ah did try at various points to write it as a love story.
00:16:09
Speaker
didn't work. you know I did try to write it as a kind of ghost story where I'm he's not there, um didn't work. And ultimately, I think the language the language understands the pacing and the journey even before the writer does consciously in a weird way.
00:16:26
Speaker
So you know it's it's always been my experience with fiction that that you find yourself moving in a direction and you don't quite understand why and it's the story compels you to go there. you know And later on, you can look back and say,
00:16:40
Speaker
Ah, okay, I had intended this, but actually this is what worked out and I see why now. But it's it's funny that life does the same. yeah I mean, you know, real lived experience. Again, what you're saying about the secret in your mind which didn't come out of the writing, but, what you know, when we write stuff like what seeps through, even without our intentions or or knowledge, sometimes.
00:17:07
Speaker
What I mean is, you know, even throughout these years, when the story I had built for myself and the fantasy that I had constructed who had absolutely no connection to the reality.
00:17:19
Speaker
When I looked back at my diary or at things I had written at the time, they were as stark as they, you know. So even in my head, as I was saying, oh, well, he's got his reasons. And, you know, that's probably a good reason. And yeah, I understand that reason.
00:17:36
Speaker
on paper whenever I was left alone and would write just, I mean, nothing, you know, not a dear diary, but even um even just a journal of, I was traveling here and I did this and this is the conversation I had.
00:17:50
Speaker
It was totally clear that this was a really narcissistic, deceptive, dark fantasy that that that the man had spun for me.
00:18:02
Speaker
And it's so odd to me that I could write it clearly. but I couldn't see, I couldn't know it. Yeah. If that makes sense. I don't even know if that doesn't make sense. No, no, no, no, it definitely does. I was just, yeah, I had so many thoughts about that, about like what, A, you know, the stories, as you say, like the narratives that are spun by others that we so easily then just go along with, right? Whether even somewhere inside you knew what was happening all along and it came out of the writing. But then to translate that into memoir as a,
00:18:31
Speaker
It's a whole other feat, right? And, you know what I mean? like i you know, people journal. I'm thinking of Melissa Phoebus' work and her essay on, like, navel gaze. i think it's called In Defense of Navel Gazing and thinking about, like, how do how does one write about the self?
00:18:46
Speaker
And the critique that she's always got about, like, why do we want to read this woman's diaries? She's like, do you think that's what I'm doing? Like, the memoir isn't a deeply constructed historical aesthetic form.
00:18:58
Speaker
yeah So I'm just interested in kind of translating that, the writing of the journal that is unconscious, perhaps, or not, but you can't see what's happening versus how do I then tell this story?
00:19:09
Speaker
How do I, and as you said the word fairly, which is like a really interesting word to use, right? Like, how do I present him fairly? but also I'm tying it into this other story. You know, these are both moral and aesthetic questions, I guess.
00:19:21
Speaker
thanks um Yeah, they are, I suppose. I mean, i I find the term memoir always a little unsettling just because even I remember seeing the copy for The Hour of the Wolf, my publisher sent me the, you know, the back of the book copy.
00:19:39
Speaker
I remember saying, ooh, you're calling it a memoir. And they were like, what it is. I just didn't know. I felt really kind of odd with it because because in a way some part of it did feel even more personal than a memoir.
00:19:52
Speaker
you know Because I feel there are aesthetic choices that can be made. And then there's a kind of writing where you you feel at least you don't have a lot of choice. it's You have to just tell it as was.
00:20:07
Speaker
And also because It did feel sometimes like a diary. It did feel like trying to see things as starkly as possible without overwriting them or underwriting them more. But I'm not sure I was totally conscious of all the choices.
00:20:23
Speaker
But I do know that when i when I had left the relationship, one of the things that helped oddly was sitting down and writing, not in the way I would have written in a diary or in a notebook or...
00:20:37
Speaker
Just notes, more like. But sitting down and writing at my computer what had happened. And some of those things made it into the book, made their way into the book.
00:20:48
Speaker
And maybe that's why it felt like the narrative was possible to spread through. Because some of it had been waiting to be moved. But yeah, I don't know. Why do you think fairly is a strange word? Because it can't be fair. ah No, I just think it's a, oh I don't know when writing about, you know, there's a question of like, how do you write about real people, right? Whether it's memoir or whatever you want to call it.
00:21:13
Speaker
um I'm thinking about like the debates around Julie Myerson's book, right? Where she wrote about her son, for instance, right? And in that she's not writing about her. she's writing about abuse and various other things, but like people were like, you know, you've got to be sensitive to the other person's needs. Right. And in this book, the man is, he's just not pleasant. Right. Like they're sure he's attractive in various ways, but he's not pleasant. And wonder what, like, it was just, it was interesting the word you use is like fet as though there is a expectation to write fairly about other people, if they're not the ones doing the writing or whether it was a question for you of,
00:21:46
Speaker
I need to explain to you how I got into this thing with this man. do you know what i mean? Oh, that's interesting. No, it wasn't about explaining how I got into it because none of those explanations would have made any sense. frankly you know not Not even to me.
00:22:02
Speaker
No, I guess I was thinking because in the writing that i that I'd done previously that involved real people, either there was a political context or a larger context that explains why they might be unpleasant or why I might find them unpleasant, why someone else might not. or you know, when I've had to do interviews with people or write a feature about somebody, that's always uncomfortable because you know, they have to see it at the end and then there's always something they want to quibble with, like they didn't say that or, you know, their film that you criticized was actually really good and you didn't understand it. or So there's always that.
00:22:44
Speaker
So I wasn't thinking of being like objective, you know i wasn't trying to do that. But in my own accounting, I suppose, of of the relationship and of me, of of me personally, trying to understand, i had to be a little forensic with myself and ask myself, well,
00:23:01
Speaker
Was it worth it? Like, what did you get? And so I have to say that part of, part of the spell in a way that was caused doesn't come from the unpleasantness, but I'm pretty sure it was part of the grooming in a way, you know? So in that sense, I meant fairly. So it would have been, it would have been unjust of me to say, um, I was with this controlling person who gaslit me and that's it.
00:23:27
Speaker
I mean, I, I, and not I don't mean like physical characteristics or like he was funny once in a while, but I felt it was important to say that part of the allure was that and he did really help me at the beginning.
00:23:41
Speaker
And it's only in that accounting that I then realized, oh, is that grooming? Is that teaching me how to deal with things that make me uncomfortable? Because he's going to put me through a similar process.
00:23:52
Speaker
This one of the thoughts I have about the opening and the kind of book as a whole, that it's in this present tense, right? So one day I see a wild deer, it is evening,
Influence of Reading on Writing
00:24:03
Speaker
the second month of lockdown in the spring of the pandemic, which I don't know, for many listeners, I guess that provokes a situation, right? One day I see a wild deer is like is one thing, right? It's kind of this beautiful,
00:24:16
Speaker
moment and it's like one day it feels almost it want to say fairy tale-esque but there's like an element of ah you know it's kind of like mythical kind of time it is evening the second month lockdown that's when you kind of go oh no yeah the second month oh oh but we suddenly have like knowledge as readers of like what's to come right that there's this actually there's a real expanse of time yet right um and and later on you say like to write out what we imagine will be the only wave of this virus you're like who okay good luck to you in that knowledge and that moment in time but the present tense is such an interesting mode right to tell a story and whether we call it memoir or whatever you want to call it and story of the past like ah at what point did you realize present tense was the one for the story I had a really tough time actually with that and it got away from me many times and might still have gotten away from me and I think that's because there was a lot of
00:25:15
Speaker
as you are anyways with memories, going back and forth and trying to think, did I do that because of this? Or did that happen to me because I reacted like that? And then there was ah the slipperiness of time, ah which is anyways quite elusive. And, you know, when you're telling a story, you will skip bits that don't feel like they pertain, or you'll want to rush ahead to some things.
00:25:41
Speaker
And you know you're always worried, did you did you set it up enough so that you can do that? Or does it feel like something's been let down? But also I just find time itself a really queasy concept.
00:25:53
Speaker
And the use of time I find also really you know uncomfortable. And so there were definite choices there, but there was also a lot of forgetting time, if if that makes sense, that just happened naturally.
00:26:11
Speaker
Time also in memoir, I feel is tricky because of repetition. And you don't want to belabor things. And you don't want to have a maturity that you didn't have at the moment.
00:26:24
Speaker
You know, in the writing, you don't want to appear though you knew so much more than you did at that time. Because really, the truth is, usually you knew much less. So it was a bit like trying to catch, um you know, air dealing with time.
00:26:40
Speaker
And that was something that I did struggle with writing The Hour of World. Well, it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like you're struggling with it when you read it. It's very, the prose is so like present and like limpid in a way. I don't know if that's the word I mean, but it flows like very naturally as though you're just, as though I'm just like listening to you tell me.
00:26:58
Speaker
Like, I don't really know how to describe it very well, but there's like a real immediacy to that is partly the present tense, but it's also like just the way you write, I think. Like you, obviously write well but the present is such like a you're right there's maybe it's helpful to you as you write about the past but I think it also does something to the reading experience of keeping us suspended yeah I do think that it it also to be as clear as I want it to be it had to be in the present you know the bit that that happens in the beginning of the books is pregnancy of coco's
00:27:33
Speaker
And the urgency with which it affected all of us, I felt really had to be the present. Because if it isn't, then you know too much about the fact that it's going to be over in a month. And, you know, oh, so much time has passed.
00:27:50
Speaker
And for me at that time, I remember, God, I mean, not that anyone wants to remember that time. But it felt, it it had this weird quality of feeling like every day was just like sludge slowly, like oozing down a wall.
00:28:05
Speaker
But then your whole life going by, you know. So being in the present felt necessary. It felt necessary. But, that you know, the going back and forth and the dipping in and out of vignettes or, or or you know, memories or different moments, I was treated. Yeah, 100%. And I think it helps.
00:28:24
Speaker
But it helps so much with the mood and the tone of the book, right? You could easily be like, I'm now here. And no spoilers, the last chapter does like, accelerate us a bit into the future in a way that I was like, whoa, the sense of time is much different to that last bit. Yeah. and And you write, you can easily tell the story from this vantage point of like,
00:28:43
Speaker
now I know differently or better, or now I have this experience, or, you know, let me, let me go back and tell you about this thing, fill it in. And you're right. Like, Ilno does that perfectly right in all of her books. She is like in the mire of the feeling and she's not letting you go from that. She is not giving you the benefit of like stepping outside of feeling.
00:29:03
Speaker
which is why I love her so much. Yeah. and it's good Some people call her ruthless, right? But it's like a, like, you must look at this thing in the way that I have to look at it. Like in the moment, I feel like hell because this person has disappeared. Right. That's what we just left it on the page. And I think it really works as a present tense. I've read a few things recently about people like critiquing the present tense as like a contemporary mode.
00:29:26
Speaker
And I'm like, it's just a tense, right? It's just, I don't know. But I think it adds so much to the sense of, actually, there is some dread in this book where I'm just like, actually, I i don't know where you're taking me, Fatima, right? I don't fully know.
00:29:41
Speaker
Similarly, there's like hope, right? Because I'm like, okay, the lockdown will end. You will get out. Well, you know. Well, you know, depends. But you know what I mean? As in you will get out of this village.
00:29:54
Speaker
Coco, I hope will be okay. You know, there is a sense of like forward lookingness. But I think in terms of, yeah, that feeling, that affect about will you be safe? Will the dog be safe? Will this?
00:30:07
Speaker
And obviously we know the relationship end. Like I'm in for that because I have spent you get a sense that like it's over, but like you don't fully know that. and And so I think that that present tense is doing a lot a lot of, it's doing a lot of work.
00:30:20
Speaker
I do feel, i mean, i'm I'm glad there was a undercurrent of dread because that's definitely how I felt throughout it all. and i and And the looseness of information and the lack of certainty only turbocharged the dread for me.
00:30:39
Speaker
Because from one day to the next, I would never know what was going to happen. And that I think was also part of the control in the sense that if you never really know what's going to happen, you can't fight too much for what you want or to defend yourself because it it might be a process that's already set in.
00:30:58
Speaker
So dread was very much in my mind as I was writing. So just in the recalling of the event, I had dread. I felt dread. But After I was a good way through the book, I don't know if you know this writer, Jill, is it Cement?
00:31:15
Speaker
I think, okay, so her she wrote to two memoirs, and the second one is called Consent. And the first one, if I'm not mistaken, though, probably am is is A Half Life.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I remember reading a review of Consent, and it's it sounded interesting, and she sounded like an interesting writer, and I thought, okay, I'm going to read the first.
00:31:38
Speaker
the first memoir, which I did. And it's just, you know, it's a coming of age and growing up memoir on her and this love story and her ah father and her family.
00:31:50
Speaker
And then I mean, not to do spoilers. I don't know. if Everyone hates spoilers. But so spoiler five run was jump ahead 20 seconds. That first memoir is about her falling in love with an old, a much older man and being quite young when she essentially has an affair with a married man then, you know, leaves this family for her.
00:32:13
Speaker
And then the second book, Consent, begins with this question of did she consent to that? She was so young. You know was it really love? Was it grooming? Was it something sinister? Was it something true, on the other hand?
00:32:29
Speaker
And even now, as I'm telling you, like, I feel uncomfortable. Like, I feel, oh I don't know. And you don't really know. you kind of go with her. throughout the second memoir.
00:32:40
Speaker
And, you know, she does resolve it. Like she she tells you what what she thinks it was on the last page, pretty much. But it it it is an uncomfortable journey. And I suspect that's what it was for the for the writer to to live it.
00:32:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, you succeeded, the the book I read. And I think that's part of the reason I read it in a in a very quick way. It was almost like, I need to get to the end in a kind of weird, strange way. I like, I need to know that everything is okay.
00:33:08
Speaker
Which is such a strange sensation, right? Of like, i don't know before I read the book. Like, I don't know who you are, but there is a feeling of like, I have to get through this because sitting in the suspension,
00:33:22
Speaker
It's quite difficult. and And you open with questions too, right, in that paragraph. No one knows what COVID is yet. None of us knows how to behave. What does the virus have to do with a pregnant dog? Right, because the vet says we're only seeing emergencies.
00:33:34
Speaker
And, you know, there are way more questions in here too, right? Like, what does it mean to... look after one another? what does it mean to be relational to non-humans? What does it mean to like be in a quote-unquote relationship with someone who is abusive? Like there are so many driving questions as you're talking about that like the book kind of answers but also also leave suspended in a way.
00:33:55
Speaker
Well you know it's interesting because and this is why close reading also interesting. As I get older my life or my career as a reader matters more and more and more to me.
00:34:09
Speaker
And yeah I've heard other people say that. I've heard other people say, oh I'm a reader before I'm a writer. And I never really understood, like, what do mean? Of course, we're all readers. but But it does matter more to me. And I think with The Hour of the Wolf and the book I wrote before, New Kings of the World, which is basically a work of narrative reportage, I was writing books that I wanted to read. you know And I was writing them the way I wanted to read them.
00:34:36
Speaker
rather than torturing myself, trying to write them as a writer. And it's not that there wasn't torture involved with these two books, but really it felt like there was much less. you know if i If I look at it in like the clear light of day, yeah, there was much less torture. There's always going to be a bit of, you know, but I i just wanted to write books that I wanted to read.
00:35:00
Speaker
And I think it's harder, I don't know, as one gets older, you know You have less patience for books. I don't know like you know, or maybe it's just my attention span. Or overall, am hungering for a certain kind of writing that feels visceral and true, whatever the genre is.
00:35:21
Speaker
And that's going to take me to some essential understanding of the loneliness and suffering and heaviness we walk around life with. I want that, whether it delivers or not, I want the promise that it's coming. you know And when I was younger, i I don't think I knew what I wanted. I think I was along for the ride and I could go a long way with a book before thinking, no, it doesn't work for me.
00:35:46
Speaker
Or I would, I was more, and this sounds like a bad thing. i actually, i don't know, but I wouldn't, I would give a lot of chances to books to be what I wanted them to be. And I don't have that same patience now.
00:35:59
Speaker
Like I know pretty quickly if it's going to give me what it is I'm looking for. and And, of course, you're wrong. And there are books I think, well, this didn't do it for me. And I go back to them two years later and and love them.
00:36:13
Speaker
And I think we read differently at different points in our lives. But the writing of ah The Hour of the Wolf, i really i really was thinking more like a reader than the writing.
Fatima's Writing Routine
00:36:24
Speaker
Maybe that's a good transition then to ask you my more kind of writerly question is yeah maybe each book is different, right? But do you have a set kind of writing practice? Like, are you always on a laptop? Are you in the same time every day? Do you have to get to certain word count? You know, all those kinds of questions.
00:36:44
Speaker
Is it the same or or for this book? Yes, it's actually, it's pretty much the same. I mean, i always begin on paper. i always put down notes. And I might put down notes for a long while before I even know what exactly I'm i'm going to do But it always begins with notebooks. And the notebooks are, I mean, I am one of those caricatures. Like, if yeah I have the wrong notebook, I can't it.
00:37:10
Speaker
Like, I can't start. If the pen is wrong, I can't start. And i will I will go on a wild goose chase to find exactly the kind of pen I need. and So all those conditions have to be kind of perfect before I begin.
00:37:23
Speaker
I take notes until i feel I know where I'm going. And sometimes the notes are obvious. Sometimes I have no idea. I'm just writing down things as they occur to me. And then, of course yeah and then of course, you have to wait again for like the the right moment to strike.
00:37:41
Speaker
Because if you step down to prematurely if you're sit prematurely, not quite sure. i do always write then on a laptop. So then I'll go from notebook to laptop.
00:37:53
Speaker
im I'm usually, when you start writing, especially you just want to write all day. But the morning is the best time. I mean, I'm i'm a morning writer because at least your phone isn't beeping and at least, you know, there isn't like real life stuff to deal with early, early. Everyone else is still asleep and you can kind of get on with it. And normally i write for as much as I can.
00:38:19
Speaker
And then once you get really into it, then I'll write in the mornings and then I might go back and edit or do research or read in the afternoon, evening.
00:38:30
Speaker
And it was pretty much the same with The Hour of the Wolf. With The Hour of the Wolf, of course, it being locked down, it was really that second wave of the pandemic, which is when I started writing there.
00:38:42
Speaker
And because we were still sort of locked down and it was difficult to get things and I didn't have the perfect notebook. And so I was stuck thinking, like, what do I, I have to remember these things. What do I do?
00:38:53
Speaker
And yeah, and I had to improvise. And so i remember going onto my computer and I would pull up like notes, you know, or voice memos, which I mean, and I would, and I would type down these things.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I would think to myself, like, this is, what this is a very new way of doing things like, okay. But actually it was quite nice because there's a disorder in the notebooks that then requires you to kind of like, you excavate before you sit down at the laptop and having it already there, i didn't expect would be quite so nice, but I did rather.
00:39:33
Speaker
Wait, so what it what is your notebook and pen of choice? Oh my God. um Is there a brand? I have like, this is for like the journalism I have to do. okay so it's changed now. i Currently I like these lecture. term 1917 notebooks and I used to use the thick ones like 200 pagers and I've gotten really into the 123 pagers and I've really gotten into the soft but my I mean as of six months ago I was using the hardcover bigger ones so as currently I'm really into these ones and then if it's something not to do with like a book or articles but like other stuff then I really love the Prado and I've
00:40:16
Speaker
I've written about it somewhere to do with this book. And so whenever I'm there, I get notebooks. And, oh, obviously they have to be online. Oh, okay, well.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, obviously. I mean, I didn't even believe like obviously i didn't i didn't think I needed to say that. But if it's not like writing, writing, like a book, then I can have the weird dotted, you know, bit. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise it has to be plain.
00:40:40
Speaker
and then And then if i'm beginning a book, if I'm beginning like a novel, And I quite like those plain moleskins. You know, they're just the paper ones that come in packs of three. um Obviously the size is important. I don't want the one that's too big because the idea might not pan out.
00:41:00
Speaker
The notebook has to go away. I don't want it to be too small. because i don't want to have seven feet in them. oh I mean, I can go on and on. and then the no ah And then the notes that I take for myself...
00:41:12
Speaker
I'm currently sharing a desk with my husband and he's really quite disrespectful in my notebooks. He just moves them and I'm like, do you know that they're laid out like this for a reason? Pens, the placement is very particular. I'm not like, I'm not a pen snob or anything, but I need it to be a certain kind of pen. So if it's a novel or if it's, usually if it's a novel and if I'm doing like edits on paper, then I want a fountain pen.
00:41:42
Speaker
I mean, I sound ridiculous, but it it is like a child getting dressed, you know, being like, I have to wear boots because... yeah and Writing is so embodied though, right? look it Like it is.
00:41:55
Speaker
And I think if there's a thing that helps you get there in that kind of translation thing, like if it's buying a particular book or having a particular paper, like so be it. You've got to do the things. I don't know why it's like that, actually, because there's no like foundational moment or trauma that does it to you. It's just you develop. And it's not even superstition as much as it is the way you feel the process has to go.
00:42:20
Speaker
or I mean, I feel it. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. I mean, I also agree about plain paper, but yeah it was just, it was interesting when you said like, obviously, it's just very funny. Well, you know what I hate is when people give you gifts and they're like, oh, you're a writer and they bring you a notebook. And I'm like, you don't even know what kind of chaos you've just done.
00:42:39
Speaker
Like, have you given me a line notebook? Because I can't even use it to write lists down in them. um, yeah. And people will be like, oh, I took the liberty of buying you some pens as a gift. And I'm like, send it back, give it back. i But, it but of course I'm South Asian, so I can't, I can't be like, why?
00:42:58
Speaker
have to be like, oh, thank you. And then, you know, you're stuck with them. Yeah, please. Let me re-gift these. Yeah. yeah You were talking about like being a reader as well as a writer, but were you writing as a child? Like, do you have those early writing memories? Yeah.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, i I had a diary from as soon as I could write. And i I was looking at it recently, actually.
00:43:26
Speaker
I still got it, luckily. And I tried, I numbered the pages. Of course, I didn't really know how to count. but i still don't really know how to count. But I numbered the pages because I had a sense that this had to go in some kind of order. It wasn't just willy-nilly.
00:43:39
Speaker
And I used to write stories for my father's friends. So I would write them stories and then I would like to staple them together. And like every friend of his got a different story. And I felt like, for me, that was like a real gift that I was giving them.
00:43:53
Speaker
And then as I got older, yeah, of course, I had my own newspaper for a while. And I, yeah, I was always a writer, actually, I was. Even though I always loved books as well, so I was i was always both.
00:44:08
Speaker
But I don't know, they were always hand in hand. Yeah, yeah, for sure. and And you've written across so many different genres and styles and forms, right? That, yeah, it's always just interesting to hear how people, like where they started, right, I think.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah. You know, there were memoirs to begin with, like, poet. You know, like, ever like people always say, like, I started with poetry and then I realised I couldn't write poetry, so now I just write novels. Yeah. I'm always just interested in like, how people's journeys through writing. like So I guess I wrote memoir from the beginning and fiction. But I know, and it's true what you say, like, you experiment with something and then you go back to it and then you think, oh, it's like this and maybe I'll get better at it.
00:44:50
Speaker
I know that I'm not a short story writer. Like I, I'm pretty like accepted. I'm not under any illusions. I don't need to come and go with it. I know that.
00:45:02
Speaker
And that's, that's kind of a relief in a way, you know, besides that, i mean, I'm not sure it's all up for grabs. I don't think I wrote, I wrote, um I adapted one of my novels into a a screenplay, into a script once.
00:45:16
Speaker
And I really loved, learning about the process and it it was like such a different way of thinking and writing. It felt like totally new muscles had to be made to do it.
00:45:27
Speaker
But I can't say I ever want to do that again. Just because it, it just, it damaged, I feel like it damaged, it crippled me for like my other writing, if that makes sense. Because the writing I do normally, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, relies on on a whole different set of muscles.
00:45:45
Speaker
And though I really loved everything I learned, And I found it fascinating to watch and study. i didn't enjoy coming out of it and then going back to write. It wasn't natural for me to come out of it.
00:45:58
Speaker
of Right. It's a whole other thing. Do you have like tips for like writers out there or kind of like any lessons or like activities you suggest
Advice and Recommendations for Writers
00:46:08
Speaker
for people? i don't do I don't know. Do you teach creative writing ever?
00:46:11
Speaker
I have done here and there a little, little bit, not, not anything long term. Okay, well, maybe there's like three simple things. There are things that I try to follow. I think writing how you speak is really important.
00:46:26
Speaker
And I think that's especially important for young writers or early career writers who feel a kind of imposter syndrome or feel like, you know, oh, if I'm going to be a writer, I have to.
00:46:38
Speaker
And I just think that's so damaging to the writing, you know. And it's the first thing I see when I read other people's writing. If they're using a word that they never use in conversation. i just feel like it it smells, like it shows, you know?
00:46:53
Speaker
Don't do it, write simply. It's just so, it's so powerful when people write simply, you know? Just to go back to Annie Ono, that's why she's so fantastic, isn't it? I mean, she's just, it's like a blade, that kind of writing, soaking.
00:47:08
Speaker
And then I guess the second thing i think is really important to read around what you what you're writing. And but there is a little bit of intuition there. So some writers can't do it too early.
00:47:22
Speaker
They have to be kind of midway through the process before they go out. Some writers have to do it before they sit down to write even one word. And I'd probably vacillate, but i I've done it both ways. Like I've read before and I've read during.
00:47:39
Speaker
But I think that's really, really valuable. And I know writers always feel like, oh, I don't want to get influenced. And, you know, I don't want to, I think you really need to read around what you're writing because you need to see what works, what doesn't work, you know, and what works, you make your own, you know, what doesn't work, you know, not to ah to follow. So I guess that's my second, but ah which is very, very, very important.
00:48:03
Speaker
And this is a personal rule, but I really think it should be everyone's rule. is that save possibly like one person, you know, like I have one or two readers, but save for those one or two readers. And I'm not the kind of writer that has like 17 best friends who look at their work or anything. never tell anyone what I'm doing until it's done.
00:48:28
Speaker
I just think it's so important to keep the story, this narrative, the whatever to yourself until you've finished. Because it's such a delicate, fragile thing.
00:48:39
Speaker
And you cannot expose it to air. um so I am big on secrets when it's regarding what you're writing. Because i've seen i feel like I've seen writers, and it's happened to me, that you know I have said, oh, I'm doing this.
00:48:56
Speaker
And I've overspoken about it. And then it loses some of the mystery and the magic, even for you. When you sit down at your desk, you're kind of like, Or i think other people, they they muddy your you're thinking. you know So you tell someone innocently like, oh, I'm writing about dogs.
00:49:16
Speaker
And then they say, oh gosh, you know why would you write about dogs when you could write about swallows? So fascinating. And then now you've gone back to the desk and you're thinking, oh, I don't know.
00:49:29
Speaker
And I just, I don't know. I feel like it it gets in my way. It's the same way like when i'm if I'm cooking, I don't want someone helping You know, it leave me alone. Like, I'll do it.
00:49:39
Speaker
I'll make my own mistakes. You know, I don't want your help at this point. So I think that's really important to keep it quiet until until it's formed and then release only very slowly. Those are great bits advice. I love that. um And yeah, I also really struggle to cook with other people. So I'm just like, just leave me in my little space here. I feel that deeply. Okay, my final question that I ask everyone is, what books would you recommend to listeners? They can be old things, new things, things you go back to, anything you want to celebrate.
00:50:14
Speaker
Okay, um I think I would recommend the the Palestinian writer Tariq Bakoni. He's got two books. They're incredibly different. So one, is is like it's just come out, his memoir is called A Fire in Every Direction.
00:50:31
Speaker
And it's ah it's a memoir, it's ah a queer coming-of-age book, but he's also um written a book called Hamas Contained, which is, you know, as different as you can guess.
00:50:44
Speaker
um but yeah But it's really accessible, it's really accessible study. So I would recommend both his books, I wouldn't ask anyone to choose. I think This House of Grief by Helen Garner is just an extraordinarily told book because it's a really tragic story and a really kind of frightening story that Helen tells. It's a courtroom story. don't know if you've heard it, but she just writes so beautifully and she observes people so impressively that you just feel like, I mean, I would read, you know, Helen Garner on her way to the supermarket.
00:51:21
Speaker
I think she's so good. There's a book by Mary Gateskill that I feel like not enough people know, a novel called Veronica. It's such a wonderful, weird book about friendship and, oh, one of the most beautiful poems that I've read possibly ever is a poem called I Grant You Refuge by Hiba Abunada, who was a poet from Gaza, and she was killed in October 2023.
00:51:55
Speaker
And I have not yet been able to read that poem without crying. It's just a phenomenal, phenomenal work. It's such a loss for poetry um that Hiba cannot continue writing.
00:52:08
Speaker
And then, yeah, i think those are the things that are on my mind right now. I would definitely recommend those two memoirs I mentioned, Half-Life and Consent. They're just really interesting to read together as well.
00:52:22
Speaker
And if if you haven't, I think the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali is really just, if people are encountering it for the first time, i think there it's really, I envy them.
00:52:37
Speaker
Thank you. I will link to all of these wonderful suggestions in the show notes so people can click it and go find them. Fatima, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this.
00:52:48
Speaker
Thank you so much. It's been so fun to talk to you.
00:52:53
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. If you'd like more on memoir or life writing, check out episode three with Noreen Massoud or episode seven with Amy Key. They're both really brilliant and very different. Please subscribe if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube.
00:53:10
Speaker
Share with people in all the places. Tag me in any posts of episodes that you like and do fill out the feedback form if you can.
Conclusion and Show Support
00:53:16
Speaker
You can also get transcripts and other information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.