Poet and short story writer Athar Tahir has come up with a novel as he expands his literary oeuvre in English literature. His novel Second Coming, published by the Lighthouse Publishers, centres around a man who falls for a far younger woman at the later stage of his life. It’s more than just a romance as the protagonist attempts to take cognisance of emotional and mental complexities of both the people involved in the story. That Tahir took on the genre of novel after his accomplishments as a poet and publication of a short stories collection about 32 years back was a surprise to many.

To his question of the evolution of his debut novel, he talked about evaluating experience of life, both at the moment of experience as well in retrospect.

“This (Second Coming) is really quite a late-age work but that’s itself the subject of the novel–aging. That’s the whole idea that you experience the process of aging and how does this aging happens. It tries to explore the sensitivities and sensibilities of an aging protagonist and how he thinks about his past and what’s happening to him now and what the future holds for him.”

Tahir says that his novel works at three different levels as the narrative continues with flashbacks and those flashbacks are integrated into the current experience of the protagonist.

He says that it started soon after the last visit to Thailand in 2016. He completed it in 2017 but did not publish it because he kept reviewing the manuscript. “The last sections I edited out. It was a much larger novel but I felt that perhaps that portion was distracting from what I intended to do. I deleted tens of pages so that it becomes a more cohesive work of literature.”

About the craft of novel writing, Tahir found it challenging in the sense that it was a different way of thinking than he had to employ for writing his poems.

“In poetry, there is a great deal of sensitivity towards images and metaphors that you use to manipulate the structure. There is a great deal of craft. In the novel, you have a larger canvas. You are at greater liberty to play around the experience and the thinking that has gone into the novel. In this novel, I adhere to the Aristotelian technique – the beginning, the middle and the end. I was aware that I was conforming to the classical form of the novel. But at the same time, I was trying to make the readers see the whole narrative through the eyes of the protagonist and that in itself creates a certain amount of requirement from the reader’s side.”

Athar Tahir says that in Second Coming there is just one person commenting on everything and the reader has to engage with him to discover the reality and what the protagonist is making up in his mind. There are questions left unanswered and the reader has to see what’s true and what is mere imagination, Tahir asserts.

To the question of autobiographical elements in his novel in which the protagonist shares certain facts about with Tahir himself, the poet-turned-novelist says no author can write a novel without something of himself in it whether it’s fantasy, stream of consciousness or science fiction. “If you say that the protagonist is based on the writer, that’s an assumption. The name of the protagonist was purposefully left out because if the name had been given, it would have been a certain person. Without a name, it could be anybody or everyman. That was the whole idea. Much of it was left to the imagination of the readers. If they think it’s autobiographical. That’s fine. But that’s not necessary. But they should concentrate on the evolution of the character.”

About the importance of fiction to be embedded in real life, whether on one’s own experiences or of others, Tahir thinks that for any character to be relevant it must speak of some aspect of the reader’s personality. “If the reader finds something factual or something he can relate to, that’s the triumph of the novelist. It proves that the writer has created a persona of truth in fiction. Fiction is based on facts but just those interpreted by the author.”

Tahir reveals that Second Coming is a part of a quartet. “There are four novels that are interlinked. I have written the first novel which I wrote before this Second Coming—the fourth novel in the quartet. I am holding the first novel for publishing later this year or early next year. There are two other novels that come between the first and the fourth. I published the fourth novel of the quartet first in order to create curiosity and generate the interest of the readers. The readers would find the answers to the questions about autobiographical [element] when they read the other three novels.”

He says he is writing the second and the third novel of the quartet now. “The first novel that’s ready for publishing is called, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The first novel is going to be as if it has no beginning, middle and end because in it I am challenging the notion of narration. I am playing with the form. Each novel of the quartet will stand on its own feet. But it’s not something like the Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell.”

When asked about his journey from poetry to novel and the reason for writing it, he says the novel is a more exploratory medium in the sense that you can go into all sorts of directions which poetry, with its emphasis on brevity, exactitude and pertinence is something that novel may or may not accept.

“The novel is a freer genre and you can do anything with it whereas poetry has its own limitations and requirements which you have to conform to.”

He explains that he wanted to write a novel, which should explore more complicated but intertwined themes–the things and issues that prompted him to think about them. “So that was the reason for writing the novel thinking it would be more accessible. Poetry is the last thing people read because it requires a great deal of application of mind due to its inherent form. In the novel you can get away with a lot.”

Tahir goes on to say that novels are more read than short stories, plays and poetry. “It is very accessible and it’s something where everybody finds something to enjoy,” he argues.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2023