By Anastasiya Ilyasova.
Good evening Peter. You have recently published your first novel In My Brother’s Shadow, when did you decide that you wanted to be a writer?
I remember the moment I decided to become an author very clearly. I was fourteen at the time and had been extremely ill. Books had become my main form of entertainment and the way I learnt about the world in general. One afternoon I sat down and started to write. After the first few pages it seemed to be going well and I decided I wanted to write a novel. I set a goal to write at least 500 words a day and within three months I had completed it. It was during this time I discovered the magic of creativity. What struck me as astonishing then, and which I still find gratifying today is the way characters come to life – their personalities develop as you write, and they start behaving in ways that you neither expect or planned. One of the most difficult tasks in writing is persuading your characters to follow your key plot points while remaining faithful to the people they are. It was this experience that persuaded me that I wanted to be a writer – and much of my experience since then has been a deliberate quest to gather experiences and to develop myself and my skills as a writer.
As I understand it, most of your novel is set in the Balkans and in Russia? Why is this?
The Balkans and Russia are both exotic locations– much of their history and culture is unknown to the West and those that visit are hampered from getting a closer look because of language difficulties. This creates a natural sense of intrigue which I build on in my novel.
The other reason for these locations is that I can explore topics in a foreign setting more easily and objectively than if I was exploring them at home – and while I could still explore the ideas of love, loyalty and violence elsewhere, their setting would change the storyline and change the nature of events, with a foreign setting I can focus more on the key ideas that I wanted to explore.
Although your book discusses Russia and the Balkans, you wrote it in English, do you believe that a western audience is going to be interested in reading about life in Russia and former Yugoslavia?
In My Brother’s Shadow explores universal themes and ideas. It explores how politics and war are reflected in society and in people’s personal lives and it explores the decisions people make as a result of events beyond their control. In it I examine the themes of violence, love and loyalty and these themes are as important in the West as they are in Russia. The foreign setting enables makes it more interesting and enables people to more objectively see issues that affect us all. This book will find followers everywhere because it is a very human story about real people.
So you think someone from the West is going to be interested in a book about Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, given the current political crisis developing between Russia and the West?
It is times when we having growing tensions between countries that books like this are particularly important. Books and films can reach beyond the divide of temporal political animosities and help people see the key issues. I feel that it is particularly important to publish In My Brother’s Shadow now as it does discuss the role of military intervention in conflicts and the current situation in the Ukraine today could be seen as synonymous to that of the Balkan’s in the early 1990s. It would be nice to reconsider the events of the last century and perhaps even learn from them. The ideas brought up in my novel are as applicable to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, and any other country as they are to the Ukraine. The challenges and obstacles everywhere are similar.
You have spent considerable amount of time in Russia, why did you come to Russia of all places?
Yes, I have spent about five of the last ten years living in Russia. In part, it was the luck of the draw, at university I was interested in political science and believed that a knowledge of Russian would be useful for a future career. Having learnt the language I travelled to Russia to continue studying and ended up being a translator and journalist. I have found Russia to be a fascinating country and due to its troubled recent history it has been an ideal location to research the darker elements of In My Brother’s Shadow and other books that are currently in the pipeline.
What prompted you to write about Russia and the Balkan Peninsula? And what was your experience writing about a foreign culture, do you think five years is sufficient to study a different culture?
For this novel I wanted it to be extremely realistic and accurate. When it comes to learning another culture there are always plenty of nuances which can take years to master, in five years I believe I have seen much of Russia’s beauty and brutality – which I describe in my novel. While living in Russia I experienced a house invasion, an attempted kidnapping, and was almost killed on two occasions on the street. I interviewed people from all walks of life including soldiers and officers who had served in Chechnya and murderers who had served long gaol sentences. I also read extensively, studying books on politics, history and psychology in order to help create the appropriate feel for each of the countries and create compelling characters, who were largely drawn from people I have met.
I also read extensively from the judgements made at the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia and visited key locations in the Balkans to ensure that my descriptions were accurate. However, in describing Serbia I am afraid my descriptions are unfair, the main character in my novel has such a strong prejudice against the Serbs for the part they played in his brother’s death that his impressions can not be anything but negative. I personally found the Serbs friendly and generous and when travelling through Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia was amazed by how friendly people were – it is hard to imagine that many of the events that took place in that war really happened – but even now the bullet holes and ruined buildings show what the reality was. However, before leaving to visit the Balkans I had also learnt some Serbo-Croatian – knowing something of the local language usually brings out the best in people and I received a warm welcome everywhere in the Balkans, even in Srebrenica.
Can you tell me a little about the main character of your novel? Who is he?
A hero is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things. The main character of In My Brother’s Shadow is a pleasant, young man who hasn’t reached his full potential. I believe this is one of the blessings and curses of living in the western world today, many people are not challenged to become who they could be. Driven by a partially fictitious image of his older brother, this young man decides to become his potential. He is just like you or I and consequently remains nameless throughout the novel.
There are a huge number of publications around the world today, where does your novel sit in this spectrum and who do you think will be interested in it?
You are quite right, there are thousands of books written each year but I do believe that this book is unusual. Although the plot is my own creation, practically everything in the novel is written from actual accounts. I describe battle scenes that come from the reports at the Hague, I describe wartime experiences which I heard direct from soldiers who experienced active combat duty, and I describe events that happened to me personally. The novel is real and is powerful. You can feel the verisimilitude in it. Furthermore, the novel explores how our society relates to violence and the role it has both on a personal level and at an international level. I believe that people who have an interest in the world around them will find this a compelling and interesting book. I will not predict how successful the novel will become, but I am certain those who read it will recommend it to their friends and family. The reviews so far have been positive.
What made you decide to publish the novel now?
I completed the first draft of the novel in 2008 but with the combination of work, study, sport and the general challenges that life throws up I have spent the last six years editing and re-editing the novel. However, I felt that I needed to publish this novel this year. When I was travelling in Bosnia and visited Sarajevo and the site by the Latin Bridge where the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was shot, I suddenly became aware of the long and complicated history connecting the Balkans with Europe. It seemed disconcerting that an event in Bosnia caused the start of World War I – which was really the beginning of 20th century history – it resulted in the demise of the British Empire and the rise of America as a superpower, it also led to the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler and Cold War that followed. On the collapse of the Soviet Union it was again a conflict zone, and I really felt that this small region reflected the whole course of 20th century history. I therefore wanted to publish this book for the centenary of the start of World War I. Furthermore, with increasing tensions between East and West, it is important to publish something in readable form which looks at both the individual’s relationship to violence and that of the world in general.
You released In My Brother’s Shadow with several other works of different genres, including a satire and a detective as well as two translations, what are your next literary projects?
The most immediate project that I want to complete is a non-fiction book on language acquisition [published in October 2014 – ed.]. This brings together my experience learning foreign languages, teaching, training interpreters and translators and working as a translator myself. When I started studying Russian back in 2000 although we were taught the language we were not taught how to learn languages and so students adopt different techniques with varying degrees of success. There are numerous approaches that can be used but there are some that are much more effective than others. This book brings together a range of research and personal experience and will be extremely beneficial for anyone who has ever wanted to learn a foreign language.
The other project I am working on is a fun adventure novel which explores the way concepts of patriotism and nationalism are created and manipulated, and does this in a setting of Europe and the Middle East shortly before World War II.
You have mentioned your role as a translator a couple of times, how has working as a translator helped develop you as a writer?
Working as a translator gives you a subtle understanding of language and the significance of meaning. Effective and powerful communication is more than just bringing words together, it requires structure, logic and the right word with the right nuances for what you want to convey. As a translator you are constantly trying to find words that have the right associations as well as the right meanings. Furthermore, you quickly realise that if the structure of a message is wrong, it confuses people or weakens the message. Consequently, a good translator is being trained by their profession to be a good writer.
To learn a second language often involves quite extensive reading and so I have inadvertently made a study of Russia’s greatest writers, people like Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Pasternak and Bunin – and that influence shapes how you perceive writing and is hopefully reflected in the writing.
Another advantage of being a translator is having mastery of a second language, which enables you to step outside your own personality. Languages have their own personalities and be immersion study you step out of your own environment into a different one with different values – this changes you, you begin to accept and assume a different way of life. This ability to step into another life, I believe is crucial for powerful writing, because a writer who can do that for all his or her characters can make them appear completely genuine.