MORE books added to the #wherebooksgo giveaway

First of all, a HUGE thanks to everyone who has been sending in photographs of #HotelArcadia from all over the world for #wherebooksgo. Currently, we have 151 photographs from 28 countries. We have also had FOUR winners from three different countries who have won copies of bookss by novelists from Korea, Australia, and Scotland! This has truly become a global reading, travelling and book-loving enterprise.

We also have a NEW winner: the 150th photograph for #wherebooksgo won a copy of Paul Hardisty's debut Yemen thriller, The Abrupt Physics of Dying. And funnily enough, the book is flying its way to fellow writer, Chris Chalmers!

Many of you will know that #wherebooks go started as a both sentimental as it was what I wished to do while reading Paul Sussman’s  novel, The Labyrinth of Osiris, after he had passed way, and romantic as I have always wanted to know where books went with their readers.  So when Hotel Arcadia came out, I requested readers to send in their photographs; I love getting a glimpse into their lives, and minds, which is both a joy and a privilege and one that would be impossible without technology and social media.

From the very beginning #wherebooksgo has been a fun crowdsourcing project to trace my new novel, Hotel Arcadia's travels around the world with its readers. It is really simple: readers take a picture of the book wherever they read the book – at home, travelling, somewhere familiar or exotic – and post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag. Or they send it to me on Facebook, or email it.  I share the pics further on my website and social media. 

Readers have been sending pics from across the globe and the hashtag looks a lot like my dream list of places where I – not just my book – long to go. And I am getting to know readers from across the world who are so disparate and diverse and yet connected by their love of reading. Somewhere along the way, I realised that #wherebooksgo could also help share books that I have enjoyed reading with readers. So I have been reaching out to writers and publishers to ask them for copies of books for a #giveaway. 

Over the summer, we added the lovely Princess Bari by Hwang Sok-yong to the #giveaway thanks to Periscope Publishing. And the lovely Orenda Books contributed copies of David Ross's hilarious Last Days of Disco. We still have ONE FINAL COPY for the #giveaway.  And while, a copy of Paul Hardisty's CWA-listed, debut thriller set in Yemen, The Abrupt Physics of Dying has been won by the 150th photograph, there is a SIGNED copy (exclusive first edition hard back) of Ragnar Jonasson's Snowblind waiting for a lucky winner!

But we have some exciting news: Today we add TWO MORE books.  First up, we have two copies of Kati Hiekkapelto's FIRST Anna Fekete novel, The Hummingbird (Arcadia Books, 2014).  Defenceless, has just been released to FAB reviews. When caught up with Kati on her promotions tour, I just HAD to get her to join. As you can see, I really had to work to convince her (it involved tea and cakes...and books!)
As I had not yet read Kati's new novel, I cheekily asked her to contribute the book I had read earlier in the year and enjoyed very much: The Hummingbird.

It has been one of my favourite thrillers this year and am really pleased that we've been able to include the book that started it all!

And SECOND, by a complete coincidence, turns out that Chris Chalmers has ALSO just released a new book. It is HOT OFF THE PRESS which makes its addition to #wherebooksgo even more exciting.

Light From Other Windows explores the unravelling of a family when the youngest son goes travelling around the world and gets caught in a tsunami. The lovely book blogger Jackie Law has a review of it here.  Am SO pleased Chris agreed to contribute two copies to the #wherebooksgo #giveaway.

Chris's book is poignant, moving, and despite a grim topic, very life affirming.

SO keep those pics coming. And watch this space. We'll be working updating the pics, adding more books and finding more ways to share books we can all love! 

On Memory, Writing and Learning Stillness

This post was written in the run up for the publication of the Dutch translation of Hotel Arcadia. The Dutch and English editions are now available for pre-orders from the links above. I wrote this current post for Hebban.nl so you can read it in translation here.  I had a quite an unusual childhood and it continues to impact my writing today, in terms of themes, styles and content. I hope the customary readers of the blog will find this post interesting. And perhaps new readers will get a little insight into my life and my writing.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting near a bonfire, amidst mounds of snow, watching Tibetan soldiers clean their weapons.  Even now, in my mind’s eye, I can see the eerie brightness that snow creates at night, the orange-red licks of the flames, and the glint of metal against the olive green of the uniforms. Over the fire, a massive petrol can had been repurposed for a cauldron into which all leftovers were chucked, and its perpetual bubbling yielded the most delicious ‘everything’ soup.  And most of all, I remember the terror and sorrow, although I only understood it as an adult.

The year was 1971, and the soldiers were part of a specialised unit of the Indian army that my father led. They were heading to war and many – and I have never stopped missing them – never returned.

Another memory rises. From later in the decade. Of a bamboo hut with dirt floors and a freshly dug snake trench.  At night, I would peer through the green mesh that formed the walls, watching for the wolves and foxes that came to forage in the garden.  When we came home from playing, my mother would make us stand beyond the snake trench and empty out our pockets before letting us into the shack. With no toyshop for miles, wildlife – often of the creepy-crawly kind – tended to be our playthings.

Much has changed since those early days of living in cantonment towns and remote border posts.  By the time I entered my teens, my father had changed his job, albeit still within the Indian government. Instead of isolated villages on the Indo-Tibetan border, we started moving to places like Islamabad, New York, Windhoek.

Yet some things remained the same as the family grew, and moved. My parents were always most excited about travelling, exploring, learning, and these are loves they passed on to me. I remember learning basic Swahili by candlelight with my father in that bamboo shack because he was being prepared for a posting that never materialised. And then doing the same in light of a storm lantern for Urdu, and then in the brightness of an camel skin lam, and with greater difficulty, for Xhosa.

For many years now, I have travelled on my own, although my parents get perhaps more excited about my trips than me.

I used to think that those early days had been left behind, that I had outgrown those early memories. But increasingly my writing goes back to those impassive, kind faces that I loved and lost as a child. I want to know those lives, if only in my fiction, and learn about what they loved, wanted, feared. And I want to understand where they found that silent, unending well of courage.

A final memory. I am five and the Tibetans are teaching me to remain still. They are soldiers and monks so the lesson is two-fold, for physical survival and spiritual progress. I protest that stillness is frustrating, difficult, may be even futile. They tell me I can only master the enemy, the world, and myself when I learn to be still.  In my writing, and my life, I am still trying. 

On Hotel Arcadia: Disaster Can Bring Out the Best In Us

As many of you know, my new novel Hotel Arcadia will be published in March (bit of a sales plug, it can be pre-ordered here with a discount off the cover price). The Dutch edition of the novel is planned for the same time and can be pre-ordered here. It is my very first translation into Dutch so am particularly excited. This week I wrote a blogpost at Hebban.nl (translated into Dutch - my language skills don't stretch that far!) about what inspired the book and what I hope I have achieved. Below is the English version just in case: 

I have studied and analysed political violence for over twenty years and have long been aware that ‘bad guys,’ ‘heroes, and ‘victims’ are never quite simply so.  I have always been struck by how so many of the people who survive, even live in, violent situations are also amongst the most generous, compassionate, hospitable, and kind.  Through Hotel Arcadia, I wanted to explore this amazing human contradiction where our best qualities seem to go hand in hand with the worst living situations. 

In every violent, awful situation, the heroes – in my experience at least - are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They don’t want to be heroes, or even think of themselves as such, but given extreme circumstances, find amazing strength, courage and self-lessness.  For Hotel Arcadia, I drew on these everyday heroes to create the character of Abhi.  He has never wanted heroics, has walked away from any chance of it, and created a comfortable life. However, when he is forced by circumstances, he rises instinctively to the challenge, motivated not by glory or reward but vast compassion.

At the same time, with Sam, I wanted to put a thoroughly modern woman on the pages, and see how she copes with the pressures of balancing career, love, ambition.  I also wanted to write about the women I know and love – the ones who seem to be towers of strength and yet terribly fragile all at once; the ones who must juggle all the myriad aspects of the modern life.  And of course, I wanted to explore how love rarely follows boy-meets-girl, fantasy wedding, dream home, babies pattern. I wanted to explore modern love in all its messiness, where it must play tug-of-war with all the other things we want, love, and pursue. In that sense, Sam is the character closest to my heart: she cares too much. About everything. 

Of course, there were other ideas I wanted to explore in this book. I wanted to investigate how we look at violence. We see so much of it on our screens, between news, films, video games that I wonder if we are able to distinguish between these anymore.

Finally, as a former journalist, this book is very personal. How do we cover war and violence? Is bearing witness enough? As a journalist, I always struggled to balance the distance required for reportage with my worry that I should have been helping instead.  I stopped being a journalist because I could not retain the distance that was demanded from me.

As a novelist, Hotel Arcadia, was my opportunity to explore this moral dilemma more intimately. I still don’t have an answer for myself, but am glad Sam and Abhi found theirs.