Writer’sBlock
Kunal Basu is the author of The Opium Clerk, The Miniaturist and Racists, and a collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife, whose lead story has been made into an award-winning film. His latest novel, The Yellow Emperor’s Cure, has been published recently. Basu teaches at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
QDescribe your favourite writing space?
My study at our Oxford home is crammed, full of books with Mughal miniatures sharing the wall with Lao textiles and black and white photographs. A Javanese mask stares down at my exceptionally clean desk. The window frames a maple tree, which is a major source of distraction in the autumn when the leaves turn a flaming red colour.QDo you have a writing schedule?
I write every day of the week almost from the time I wake up to late at night, with breaks in between for teaching classes at the university.Q What inspires you to write? Do you have a secret trick, or a book/author that helps?
My story propels me. My characters feel upset when I shut off the lights at the end of a day’s writing, waiting for me to resume next morning. Wherever I go, I carry my story inside my head — in buses, at the shops, in the shower. It is the greatest of obsessions that I’ve known.QCoffee/tea/cigarettes – numbers please – while you are writing?
About three cups of Darjeeling tea through the day, punctuated by the grand indulgence of a freshly brewed Sumatra or Guatemalan coffee at mid-morning. I am a non-smoker.QWhich books are you reading at present?
Antjie Krog’s Country of my Skull, which is an account of testimonials submitted to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the abolition of apartheid. It is a harrowing and haunting book.QWho are your favourite authors?
Too many to list. Classics aside, I read quite a few contemporary authors with admiration: Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk, Michael Ondaatje, John Coetzee, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Alessandro Baricco.QWhich book/author should be banned on grounds of bad taste?
None. “Banning” — even figuratively speaking — is unacceptable. What’s good to me might be bad to someone else. I believe in full democracy for all tastes.QWhich is the most under-rated book?
Although commercially successful, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago has largely been ignored by literary critics. It glows with a kind of poetic sensibility that is rare to find in novels of all ages.QWhich are your favourite children’s books?
Satyajit Ray’s Feluda stories, that delight the child in all of us.QWhich classics do you want to read?
I was raised on a staple of classics, both Indian and foreign, and re-read them frequently. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is calling me now from my bookshelf. Perhaps it’s time for me to re-enter that hot-house of dreams and nightmares.
