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June 09, 2006

1991 interview with writer Attia Hosain (1913-1998)

Born and brought up in a Lucknow lost to posterity, Attia Hosain is the writer of the short story collection Pheonix Fled and the novel Sunlight on a Broken Column. Set in 1930's India Sunlight on a Broken Column is about the struggles an individual, society and country must face: India on the verge of partition and Laila between traditions and her heart.

In this 1991 interview Attia talks about her childhood, her influences growing up, her education, her novels and her politics.

And I wrote this book [Sunlight on a Broken Column] and was dissatisfied with it. But I handed it in to the agent and she was delighted and said that the person who was editing it and looking after it was Cecil Day Lewis [later poet-laureate of England].
Well, I mean I couldn't have dreamt of such a thing happening. I, who had read his poems, and been, as I told you that girl in my school reading all these people and wanting so much later on when I grew older and went to the university to meet poets and writers, that it should be Cecil Day Lewis involved with this?
She said, he's actually said that it is very autobiographical. It was very thick, and he thinks it is autobiographical.
I got very angry and I said, what does he mean by autobiographical? Every first novel or any novel will have to be part of oneself and people one knows, but it is not the people and it is not actually the events but it is at the same time yes. Then she said you better come and talk to him. Then I met him for the first time. He became a very dear friend later on.
I said to him, I am afraid, I won't touch it now and he said, well, there are certain parts of it that I think you shouldn't have put in to it and I said that is how it was. And he said something to me that stuck in my head: but life is not art. You are writing a book. It is not how it was as you say in those terms and would you mind if you took some bits out? I said I won't touch it, it gives me nightmares. He said I am marking, I have marked some of the pages I was questioning. So I went off into the country and I sat with it and I can't tell you how much I sliced off. I am now sad that I threw it away because there might have been in it part of the political things that he couldn't have found at the time of any use to him, which I would find useful now as memory even. I just hacked it as I thought.

read the rest here
(sound bites can be heard at the link on Attia Hosain's name above)

Posted by Soniah Kamal at June 9, 2006 10:20 AM

Comments

Thanks for posting this, Soniah. Have thoroughly enjoyed Hosain's writings and was consequently delighted to read the interview.

Lisa.

Posted by: Lisa [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 13, 2006 03:13 AM

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