Author Confession: Where I’m Headed Next
Someone recently asked me why, as a South African and the writer of Bloodlines, which takes place primarily in South Africa, I suddenly began showing such an interest in Russia and the USSR. Sorry about that. I should have made the transition clearer.
When I published Bloodlines in 2012, I had no idea that my next novel would be a companion book that explores the backstory of the same family. But I was unable to leave my characters alone and continued thinking about them, talking to them, wondering about their history. I became fascinated by the story that emerged, and ended up writing about their family history, where they came from, and how two of the main characters—Steven and Dariya—met. As those of you who read Bloodlines will remember, Dariya is Russian and Steven is South African. My new book tells the story of how their great-grandparents escaped from Latvia in the early 20th century and followed the immigrant trail—with two brothers ending up in South Africa while their siblings grow up in Moscow under Stalin’s brutal regime. Generations later, the two distant cousins meet and… as they say, the rest is history.
Because this prequel to Bloodlines takes place almost completely in what started out as the Russian Empire and ended up as Russia, once the Soviet Union collapsed, I’ve spent much of the past two years absorbing everything I could about Russian and Soviet history, politics, and culture.
I’m a storyteller, but I seem to be drawn to stories that take place in periods of political and economic upheaval. There are reasons for that, I suppose, which will no doubt become the subject of another post. Meanwhile, if I want to place my characters in situations that are historically accurate, I need to be more than a storyteller; I need to immerse myself in the social, economic and political history of a place. In writing Bloodlines I had a leg up: for all of the research I did to understand South Africa during the years since my family emigrated, I had rich childhood memories to lean on as cultural context. In writing On The Sickle’s Edge, I was again inspired by family lore, but this time the stories are of generations past, so I have had to become intimate with an even broader swath of Soviet life and history.
When On The Sickle’s Edge first began to take shape, I never anticipated what a complex and fascinating time this would turn out to be for an observer of Russian politics and life. I look forward to sharing this journey with you as I continue to explore the culinary, political, and cultural life of this new corner of the world.