LAHORE: Four novelists from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somali Land, all renowned in their own way, got together in a session on the last day of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) to find out “What Constitutes a Great Novel” on Sunday.

Novelist Sabyn Javeri posed a question about the making of the protagonists of their renowned novels.

In his reply, H.M. Navi, the author of the Abdullah the Cossack, said the protagonist, Abdullah, was a product of dozens of interviews he conducted with those who were familiar with the Karachi of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and a lot of work went into reifying Abdullah’s persona “but fundamentally late at night Abdullah is me. One day late at night a voice came to me with all his eccentricities.” He said he had a porous memory that could separate the novelist and his novels.

Nadifa Mohamed said the protagonist of her novel, The Fortune Men, Mahmood, was based on a real man that her father knew in the 1950s who married a Welsh woman and had three children with her. I did a lot of research on him in Cardiff, London and Somali Land and met people who knew him and excavated as much information as I could.

Shehan Karunatilaka said it’s not a character or situation that would start his novels but a voice. “I don’t think the project exists for me until there is a voice whether it’s a short story or an article or travel article.”

To another question, he said it’s a compulsion that the writers had like he would get the feeling that the day was wasted if he did not write a sentence or read the whole day. “I keep a record of all the books that I am reading or have read and all the films,” he added.

Nadifa said there were no very strict parameters of what I could write about. She said if she was interested in something she would write about it without any external pressures like from the publishers or readers or what they might like. “I was always interested in a particular world”. She said she liked the authors that challenge expectations, political niceties and rules.

H.M. Naqvi said he was a Pakistani male and all his protagonists happened to be Pakistani males. “The young hero of Homeboy was 20, the hero of the Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack is a septuagenarian who wakes up one morning and feels that he has led a shallow life and considers launching himself off the balcony. The protagonist of my next novel is a middle-aged man. But I would like to think that whether my protagonists are 20-year-olds or 70-year-olds, their anxiety is almost always the same and the questions like what does it mean to be a good man or a good human being and what if a good man does a bad thing”. He said the context was almost the scaffolding for the questions that he wanted to pose.

Sabyn Javeri said many of the powerful stories that we were all attracted to in some ways questioned the truth and took on the idea of what connects the people together.

To the question how the position of a writer and their identities and political context influence their works, Shehan said, “I think my position is irrelevant. I am always hiding behind the narrator. When I am questioned about the comments on the Sri Lankan flag etc, I say that’s not me. That’s Maali Almeida (the main character in his novel).”

He said he was not sure if he was trying to give a message (through his books). “Actually, the theme would come last of all. Usually, it’s the plot or the character that drives the situation. Later on, in the third draft, I figure out what’s it about. Though I try to leave no ambiguity at the end,” he said about his writing.

Nadifa said for her there was a definite transition from the writing being a private activity while creating this universe and then there was the public side of writing coming out, haunted by the other people’s perspective.

Naqvi said once he is done with his novel, it’s up to the reader to make meanings out of it and I am often wary of talking about the meaning. “The novel would be interpreted differently by Portuguese or American readers. I don’t particularly care to defend my novel or make meaning out of it. That’s your job.”

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2023