Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep20: #ReadingWomen: War

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Zing Tsjeng is joined by Paula Akpan, a journalist and the co-founder of Black Girl Fest - a celebration of black women, girls and non-binary people, Hannah Witton, a YouTuber, broadcaster and author creating content focused on sexual health, liberation and welfare and Kiran Millwood Hargrave, a poet, playwright and award-winning and best-selling author of children’s and young adult fiction.  The theme of today's #ReadingWomen book club is war. The reading list: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, 1997 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Nzgozi Adichie, 2007 The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, 2011 Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Visit Harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com. slash Toronto. With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices, and our perspectives, or while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host for Season 2 of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020, our year of Reading Women. From Zadie Smith's White Teeth to Naomi Alderman's The Power,

with spotlighting all 24 women's women's women's. Prize winning books during this podcast series, with eight book club episodes in which our guests discussed three of the brilliant winning novels from past years. And we want you to join in the conversation. Go to hashtag Reading Women on Twitter and Instagram to share your thoughts as you read along and head to the Women's Prize website atwifixion.co.uk to learn all about the 24 books plus lots more to help you set off on your reading journey. Plus don't forget to vote for your favourite ever women's prize winning book. help crown our winner of winners. Voting closes on November 1st at midnight. So head to our website

and support your favourite author. Hello and welcome to this year's final Reading Women Book Club. We have an excellent group of guests and the final three books from the list of 25 winners over the last 25 years. But firstly, our fortnightly reminder that we are still practicing social distancing. So this recording is being done remotely. So please excuse any minor sound issues. I'm joined today by Paula Akpan, a journalist and co-founder of Black Girl Fest, a celebration of black women, girls and non-binary people. Hannah Witten, a YouTuber, broadcaster and author creating content focused on sexual health, liberation and welfare, and Kieran Milwood Hargrave, a poet-player in award-winning and best-selling author of children's

and young adult fiction. Hi. Hello. Hi. How are you guys doing? Great, thank you. Today's book club theme is War, and we have three. exceptional pass winners to dive into.

They are fugitive pieces by Anne Michaels from 1997, half of the Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi, Adich from 2007, and The Tiger's Wife by Teia Obrecht from 2011. So quite meaty subject war. How did you find reading all three books as a trio? Hannah, what was it like for you? It was intense. I thought it was,

really interesting, like, reading them all at once, because I'd never read any of them before. So reading them all in preparation for this, I was, like, immediately, like, looking at, like, connected themes throughout them all. And, like, even with two of them, with the Tiger's Wife and half of Yellow Sun, it's, like, specifically civil war as well. And I thought that was, like, really interesting seeing the different ways of, like, borders being drawn and like and countries being torn apart like from within almost.

But yeah, it was heavy but it was very interesting seeing like how different all three of them were as well and some definitely lighter than others. Paula, how was it for you? It's actually like such a weird time for me to be reading about war I think because I am half Nigerian. So kind of like everything that's happening in Nigeria. currently in terms of like the ensar's movement that's actually been quite difficult for me to for me to process so I think I've actually taken myself off socials I haven't really been on

Twitter and anything like that in the like the last week so I think reading specifically fugitive pieces I think it was like really like evoking a lot of beautiful but like painful imagery so it was just such a bizarre time to be reading about war because we're literally watching genocide unfold So yeah, it was like Hannah said, quite heavy, but really beautiful writing. Now, I think that's the thing that all three books have in common. The writing is absolutely stunning. Kieran, how did you guess the theme?

Did you think that the theme of war was really strong in all these three books? War absolutely came through as such a strong theme, but more than that, for me, it became about individuals and also a collective experience of trauma. and how that sort of rips holes in memories and all that sort of thing. So for me, I expected to get saturated by the sadness and the violence, but I think it really is a testament to all these books that I managed to stay connected to the individuals and to not start just getting bogged down by all the heaviness. Obviously, it is extraordinarily heavy, but that beauty that Paula was saying,

you know, that still came through. Definitely. And I think picking up on what Hannah said that two of the books are about civil war in particular, I find that really interesting because you're absolutely right. It's not actually something that I picked up on when I was reading the three. Hannah, what do you think the two having civil war at their heart

kind of does for the experience of reading these three together as depictions of war? I think for me, in the two that were more about civil war, I felt, I did feel a lot more, I don't know, connected to the characters, but I don't know if that was to do with the characterisation itself. But it was a whole kind of like different problem of identity that was being explored, I think. In The Tiger's wife, it was so clear about the border crossing and kind of just like visualising these borders that weren't there before and then suddenly have appeared and how, depending on,

which side that you just happened to be on what that means for how other people treat you and how they perceive you and what they think of you. I thought that was just really quite powerful for me. So let's start off with the first book in today's Reading Women, which is fugitive pieces by Anne Michaels from 1997. Paula, do you mind giving us a quick summary of the plot?

Feuditive pieces follows the story of Yakubir. who is born during a time of the Holocaust. And we watch as he loses family, but also finds new family while also trying to trace Nazi studies in terms of archaeology, in terms of like they were trying to prove Aryan supremacy. So he kind of creates a life's work out of that.

And we kind of follow that kind of story of finding pieces of himself and his history, but also the damage and trauma that he's left with. What did you make of this novel, Paula? Especially because I think that it's one of those novels about the Holocaust where it's told from perspective of someone who has actually escaped it and doesn't really is finding or finding out what actually happened secondhand. I think, well, first of all, as a writer,

reading this book made me realize that I should be better because I just, Anne Michaels is so, like, talented and the kind of the metaphors and the descriptors. It was incredible to read. But I think, yeah, it touches on what Kieran had said earlier in terms of it, these books showing you individuals rather than statistics that we've made. maybe grown up with or, you know, one big abstract. It actually pulls it down into like the nuance and the finer points of actual individual experiences. So watching Jakob like actually survive, you know, watching his whole family

or seeing glimpses of his whole family, you know, being murdered or tortured. And then we're with him as he's going into the forest and being buried and just trying to survive. and then until he finds another guardian. And I just thought it was so powerful. And even just lying in the woods, in the floor, even the way that that's described, I couldn't believe it. He's just lying in a hole in some mud

and you've made this sound utterly poetic. Teach me. So, yeah, I just, I thought it was really, really beautiful and it really brings out the individual stories of the Holocaust that maybe. many of us aren't accustomed to because maybe we know of Anne Frank or we've just been taught a few of the numbers or the atrocities but actually who are the people that it actually affected and also someone who then migrates somewhere else. I think that migration story as well is

really interesting and one that maybe we don't see a lot of when it comes to stories of this calibre. Definitely and Kieran what did you make of the novel? from the opening page I remember I just read the first line and I had to close the book and just go okay this is going to be incredibly written as in the lyricism and the way that it just washed over me from that very first page I had to get in a totally different headspace for it and I love that I love it when a book takes me by the throat and just pulls me up close to it and says look you are going to listen and you are going to absorb and feel every word. And it was a very confronting book.

My grandmother's family, she lost a lot of her family in the Holocaust in Europe, in Poland, in Romania. And it was just very confronting to understand or at least get a window into the kind of collective guilt that the survivors feel. And, you know, it's not something we've ever talked about. And so I suppose I couldn't help but put that filter over my experience of it. But I think even if I didn't have that particular access to it, I still would have found it completely compelling, completely devastating. And just utterly beautiful. The way when he meets Athos, who takes him to Greece,

and they talk about everything from Antarctica to geology, just that passion for life and the world, I found it so moving that these people who had seen the worst of humanity still believed in the best of it. And that's really what I was left with was a lot of hope and a lot of admiration as well. And I think it brought it out of that sort of museum encapsulation for me and really brought it alive for the first time probably that a book's done that for me. That's amazing. And for listeners who haven't read the book yet, because you explain who Athos is really briefly. So Athos is a geologist and archaeologist, and he is actually excavating this buried city that Jacob Beer is found in as a boy. And he smuggles Jacob out because Jacob is a Jew.

He smuggles him out in his trousers. And he sort of wears him on his body and smuggles him all the way to his island of Greece. But even there, they're not untouched by war. Right. And, you know, I think the interesting thing about this book is that it's not just completely. told from Jacob's perspective. It's also told from the perspective of a young academic called Ben, who meets Jacob and is now trying to find Jacob's memoirs and Ben's parents were also survivors of the Holocaust. Hannah, what did you make of this kind of secondary protagonist

who's introduced halfway kind of through the book? Yeah, it was an interesting one because in the preface of the book, you're like pre-warned what's going to happen. Like, on the first page, it's like, this is a story about Jacob, he dies, and then we hear from Ben. Like, you know that going into it, which I think is a really, like, interesting way to kind of prepare your reader for what's, like, going to happen. But yeah, and then when we do flip to the Ben stuff, even though I knew that was happening, it did honestly take me a while to kind of care about him at first, but then he kind of, like, tells you his story and he tells like his childhood and his relationship with his parents

who were Holocaust survivors. And it just like threw me right back into it. And I think that his sections really kind of depicted that the whole thing of generational trauma as well, because Ben was born afterwards. He was born in Toronto. He never personally experienced. He never personally experienced the Holocaust, but his parents did. But you can feel his own trauma through his parents being who they are. And I thought that was like beautifully and tragically woven through our understanding of who Ben is and why he makes the decisions that he does and why he thinks the way that he does. But then also on like Kieran's point as well about the guilt, because my mom's family on her paternal side are German Jews.

Like I'm Jewish and they all managed to escape or like migrated previously. So they like early 1930s my great grandmother came to the UK and then was just like, well, I guess I'm staying here then. Yeah. So they're kind of like the survivor guilt even though like I'm three generations down from that experience. It's just still this really weird thing that you just play with constantly. And like, especially when I do end up reading fiction that is set around the Holocaust, it feels so personal even though it's so, well, it's not even that long ago. But it, yeah, there's that

distance, but also it being really, really personal. Right. And I think one of the interesting questions it poses, at least to me, is how are you meant to remember something that you never experienced firsthand. So, you know, Jacob doesn't go through what his family goes through and in the same way, Ben can't go through what his parents went through. And yet they're both trying to, you know, find out what happened to find out more. What do you think of that question, Paula? You know, how can you remember something that you aren't there to experience firsthand? I think it's so tricky because this is also something that I've touched upon in my master's study this year in that when our histories are so distorted and so much has actually been

erased then how do we actually what customs are our own and what customs have been creative from that situation so to contextualise thinking about the middle passage and how a lot of what we know of African customs African cultures and obviously country specific they were they fostered within that passage, for example, or did they exist before? And I think when like a whole history or a whole people or a whole culture is obliterated, then I think it's really difficult to know what actually belongs to you and what is actually your history or what has been forged through the really horrible and horrific circumstances that that marginalised people experience.

So I think it must be so tricky, maybe for you, Hannah, kind of understanding, like, what are these customs and what are these things that we celebrate, but also what is inherited and formed through, like, trauma. So I think it's a really hard one to actually consider because so much of what Jacob and other survivors of the Holocaust and then their children may know to. be of the culture or of your culture how much of it is actually just informed by the horrific experiences that Jewish people were put through or subjected to during that time. I don't even know if that's making sense. I think it makes total sense because I think it's also about, you know,

how do you deal with this inheritance of, you know, what your community has gone through how do you deal with inheritance that can be really traumatic? And that sometimes, you know, the people who directly went through it don't want to speak about it at all. I don't know how your grandparents, Hannah and Kieran, spoke about what they went through if they even mentioned it at all. But I think it's kind of the thing that, you know, several generations on people like us, you know, you want to find out more about your family. It's like a really, you know, natural instinct. but then how much of it can you actually find out

and how do you deal with finding out, how do you deal with finding out, you know, that terrible things might have happened? Yeah, and what can you do with that information if you do get it as well? It's just like, why do you want to know? Is it because there's a piece of view that's missing and you feel like you need to understand your heritage

and understand where you've come from? Or is it, because this is something that I feel like a lot of people can get with things like the Holocaust is this morbid curiosity. And so understanding where that's coming from and like, okay, why do I actually want to know this? And is that,

you know, is that going to make me feel better or more connected to my culture or is it just going to make me feel absolute despair? Like, yeah, it's this weird one because I definitely, like enjoy learning about history and like family history. But sometimes, I don't know, sometimes I feel like once you know,

then that's something that you then have to carry with you. And I don't believe that like ignorance is like a good thing. But it's like what are you then going to do with that information once you have it? Right. And I think it's actually really interesting thinking about the generation that we're dealing with as well. and we're talking about it or, you know, going for therapy, that's not commonplace, or it maybe just wasn't part of a structure for personal growth development or rehabilitation. And so therefore, how many people are just embodying and sitting with their trauma without outlets for it?

So, like, for example, Singh recently commissioned me to interview black British people who have gone through, like, some horrific experiences. And one person, one guy was talking about at the age of nine, he was stopped and searched three times by police in one day. And he was just, like, riding his bike and it was the same police officers. And it was clear in this conversation that he's just never spoken to anyone at length about it or even thought about the repercussions it's had for him on his life and his distrust of police, how he raises his children

and how they, he wants them to interact with police, etc. So I think like these, this like mass of trauma, like for some people, it's never had an outlet. So like, like you said, I'm like, what do you do with it? And like, why do you want to know? And now that I've told you, what does this leave me with? I just, yeah, it's such a, a box of, I think it's a box that a lot of people have kept a lid on because it's terrifying and

really overwhelming and scary to actually open and deal with. So yeah. Yeah, to the Pandora's box. I think that what Hannah was also saying about what do you, what's it for, you know, what, what's the inheritance and, and why do we want to know these things? That is actually the key question because, you know, in terms of why I want to know my stories, is it a purely selfish thing or is it I want to hear these stories because we need stories to tell us what not to do in the future and so that we don't forget. And I found it really interesting when Jacob was talking about losing his language and how he felt this sort of guilty pleasure at losing his Yiddish because it was a part of himself that he can't ever get back to. And he was replacing it with

these wonderful mouthfeel words, you know, about geology and other things. But he feels incredibly guilty about how good that feels. And I think it's like that double-edged sword of what do these stories actually teach us. What do they actually have to say to us now? Definitely. And I think it's a theme that actually repeats itself across some of the other books that we're reading. I think definitely in The Tiger's Wife, we should definitely pick up on this idea of what you inherit. Before we move on to the next book, we're going to recap what was said by Lisa Jardine, the Chair of Judges from 1997.

Fugitive Pieces is a most extraordinary novel because it goes viscerally to the heart of the survivors of any disaster. So it could be the 7-7 bombs, it could be Shrebronitsa, it could be, as the setting is, the Holocaust. It is about the despair felt, the emotional incapacity for those who survive,

particularly whose parents have been damaged by disaster, torn away from them by disaster, the impossibility of the child's emotionally dealing with that and how that marks lives. So this is the story of three people marked by the Holocaust. Athos, the geologist, Jakob Beer, the boy, he rescues the Polish. he rescues age seven from the ruins of his Jewish life.

And then brilliantly, the next generation, Ben, who is the son of survivors who have been catastrophically influenced by the Holocaust. I'm a second generation. For us, it is a book for all time. This is a classic book. It actually is a book we now teach at Queen Mary. This book will stand the test of time. You can join in our discussion by using the hashtag Reading Women.

And remember to get your vote in for your winner of winners by going to our website. Let's go to our second book, which is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimimanda and Gosea Dice from 2007. Hannah, do you mind giving our audience a quick rundown of the story? Sure. So half of a Yellow Sun is set in Nigeria in the 1960s. And it basically follows a group of characters who are all connected in terms of. of relations, relationships, and it follows the before and during of a civil war and the creation of Biafra as an independent country. Kind of like what we were talking about before, it's got this huge historical backdrop, but we're following Alana, Ogdenibo, Ogu,

Richard and Keneni, and we'd see what happens to them and how this. massive war and this upheaval changes their lives and how they think and their relationships with one another. Thank you for that summary. That was great. And I just really wanted to ask, first of all, like, how much did you guys all know about this civil war and this part of Nigeria's history before you read the book? Honestly, absolutely nothing. I, like halfway through this book, I was getting up the Wikipedia page for Nigeria and looking at Biafra. I was then really confused about what half of the yellow sun was and then saw it on the Biafran flag. I was like, okay, I get it.

But yeah, my, like, history lessons in school, if we did learn about this time period, it was as part of the Cold War. And I remember, like, my teacher's saying, and then we gave the Africans their independence. And that was all it was, rather than, like, oh, we also colonized them and, like, caused all of this, like, horrific consequences. that lasted like decades after we left as well.

So no, this is all new information to me and I'm ashamed. What about you, Paula? How familiar were you with this time period in history? So I know bits and pieces, but I am also ashamed to share that I don't actually know a huge amount, which is not great considering the tribe that my dad's from Ibibio. It's one of the states. It actually was one of the ethnic groups that formed.

the Republic. So I should know more to conclude, but I do not. But I think that I will definitely, I think it's something that I would like to look into a lot more. And I think it also really speaks to the fact that Nigeria as a country

or as a concept just doesn't exist. And it's a land of so many kingdoms, so many different tribes. It's like, it's a very colonial ideal to have this many tribes and this many, like, actual ethnic groups under one banner. But yeah, I need to definitely do some more research into it. The only thing that I'd come at it through was through my, the lens of sort of looking at it beside Indian colonialism, because that's where the other side of my family's from.

And my uncle is very interested in this idea of tribalism. and how India similarly to Africa really shouldn't exist as it does now with these lines drawn so simply through them. And so I knew about Biafra as a kind of ideal, that it was created by an ideal and that it was completely destroyed. But I hadn't ever come at it through an African perspective and also through such incredible storytelling. And the span of it, how short it was, that was a real shock to me as well.

how quickly it was made and then unmade. I think that one of the things you can really tell with this novel is that she spent a lot of time gathering eyewitness accounts from parents and friends and researched the background to this novel for years. And I was wondering if you could tell that reading the book as well. I didn't know that that was something that she did, but it makes a lot of sense because you're following five main characters. Like the three of them get their own chapters that are told from their perspective,

but then there is five of them that you're really following their experiences of. Yeah, and the detail of all of the different things that they go through and how varied it is, even though the characters that we do follow are all roughly of the same class. So that would be a very specific experience. But even within just this one group of people,

you get all of these different things that are happening depending on where on the map that they were when these events were all kicking off and yeah you can definitely tell what do you think of uh you know the there are sort of extracts from this non-fictional fiction book that talks about the history of the conflict what do you make of that kind of effect that she sprinkles through the novel i liked it to be honest i thought that was the less successful part of it and i really love fiction that that uses different ways of telling. I liked the neat twist

that it wasn't actually Richard writing it after all. But it didn't really do much for me except signal that there was true atrocity to come. I think that first section is so confronting, you know, with the box and the child and the mother. And I knew that was the first moment I really steeled myself. So it worked in that way.

But to be honest, those bits, I wanted either more of them or for them to be told in a less cursory way. That was the one bit because I was so in the heads of the three points of view. And I thought she was so deft in that respect. But maybe there's something to be said about, you know, if she'd made it a more academic tone, I would have been more interested. But for me, that was actually one of the less successful elements. But I'm basically crissizing perfection. It was wonderful.

I loved it. Paula, you know, Chimamanda says this book is kind of about love, which I think a lot of people have interpreted it to mean it's about romantic love. But to me, it's about some people falling in love with the concept, like an ideal. And then the reality of it in the same way that when you're in a relationship, the ideal that you paint of someone in your head is, you know, sometimes gets discarded when you actually go into a relationship with them and you kind of fall from these idealistic portraits of what you think someone is in the same way that the book kind of shows the true face

of what happens to this idealistic idea of a republic. What do you think she's talking about when she says that there's a book about love? I think it's really important to also remember the various types of love including platonic and I think also love of nation as well. I think perhaps this is a love letter to Nigeria as it was and maybe as it could have been. I think also it's talking about the imperfection or like the imperfectness, is that one, of love as well, in the it's fundamentally flawed and also love doesn't exist in, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. So I think because Adichy, she also speaks to how Nigerian societies are very classed and very privileged and how much that impacts the way that you move through the world. So whether you're living on a compound or not, whether you have security or not, and how that actually shaped your existence.

So I think it's kind of a way of showing the rough and ugly sides of night. Nigeria as well, the bits that we, some people would rather not remember or rather skim past, you know, this failed attempt for an independent republic. And I guess in that, in kind of talking about love, it's a way of just showing all of the various sides, perfect and imperfect. Right. Because I was really interested in how she depicts, you know, the class and privilege of some of the characters. You know, she shows it from all kinds of different angles. Kieran, what did you make of, you know, the kind of way that she depicts privilege and how privilege can in some ways not protect you? I absolutely adored her treatment of the sisters and the way that, you know,

she really didn't reduce anyone in this book to a symbol. Everyone was a complex, multi-layered person, whether we got to see the story from their head or not. And I thought, you know, Kainey is such an, she was such a contradiction because I think I was just trapped in this, in this mode of, before coming to this book, in this mode of thinking where, you know, there's good and there's bad and yes, people allow to be complex, but ultimately they're good. And then she is just so held in herself. She is such an enigma, you know, first of all to Richard and then to us as a reader and you really get to see her grow as a full person next to the open book of her sister who seems to have been trained to just be more available because she's beautiful and, you know, she has to be soft and welcoming and she rebels in essence by marrying a revolutionary.

So I found the treatment of the sisters and the way we encountered privilege and how one of them rejected it and one of them really settled into that as her power and sort of said, well, I'm the ugly sister. So I will be, you know, powerful like a man. I'm like the son. I found that really interesting how they both struggled with the constraints and also, you know, drew huge power from it. I really admired all of the characters in this, how they really stood in their own. strength in that respect. And what did you make of the depiction of war and conflict in this novel? For me, it was the most successful in drawing the past right up to the present for me as a reader. It, there didn't feel like there was any filter. And I think part of that was just the, the complete mundanity that being in a war sometimes is. It's these moments, long moments of waiting and horror sort of interspersed with these awful moments where just the violence of it is right suddenly at your doorstep. And that's, I think, something, you know, when I've encountered people who have been in conflicts more recently, that's what they say.

It's the waiting. And then it's that short, sharp shock of nothing's normal and that waking up to it. I thought it was incredibly effective. And what about you, Hannah? What did you make about this portrayal of war? I thought she did a really great job of showing the brutality of it. Like a lot of the scenes that were those short, sharp, jolting you out of the mundanity were really quite graphic and really quite visceral.

But she did a really great job of, because, you know, obviously, It's historical fiction. This stuff, like, it happened, but not to these characters. And, yeah, she does a great job of kind of, like, punching you in the face, but then, like, soothing you after the fact, going, that thing still did happen. That did happen. But here's the story. Here are these characters that you really like interacting with one another.

So, yeah, it felt like being thrown around a bit, but then ultimately being, soothed at the end. Also, some books leave you feeling like very differently by the end of them. And I feel like, you know, the feeling that you get at the end of reading fugitive pieces is very different

to the feeling you get at the end of half of a yellow sun. Paula, how did you feel? Do you feel like the two books were very different to each other? With fugitive pieces, it was very much like we were living in Jacob's head and then transferred over to Ben's.

I felt like I was feeling absolutely everything that they were going through. Or just like I think Kieran had mentioned as well, you know, like the loss of Yiddish or fears of the loss of Yiddish. I felt that keenly even though I don't even, I only speak English. So I don't even know what that loss of language looks like. So it felt like we were very much with them at every point. Whereas I think with the diet. that we see in half the yellow slum. It just, it feels very much like we're kind of spectators and kind of witnessing and bearing

witness to what's happening. But I don't feel like I'm embodied within the text, if that makes sense. Before we move on to our final book, here's Muriel Gray, the Chair of Judges from 2007. It is one of the most informative books I can ever remember reading about that particular atrocity because it wasn't atrocity. I mean, I remember this as a child. It was the 60s disaster in Biafra, which being a small person, I thought it was a natural disaster. I had no idea that it was warfare through starvation. And that is dealt with brilliantly and comprehensively, but only as a part of a hugely wonderful, thrilling human story. It's about everything. It's

about class system in Nigeria. It's about sexual politics. It's about human frailty. It is absolutely stunning. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayle's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream or paired with your favorite book. Remember, you can head to our website to find out more about the Reading Women Challenge and you can vote for your favourite Women's Prize winning novel of the last 25 years and crown your winner of winners.

We're going to go to a third book, the final book for our Reading Women Book Club, which is also written, I think, in a really interesting way and it's very different to the other two. It's the Tiger's Wife by Tia Oldbrett from 2011. Kieran, do you mind giving our readers a quick summary of the book? Sure. So the Tiger's wife is Tia O'Brit's debut novel, and it's set in a fictional Balkan village during the Civil War called Galena. And it follows, to begin with, it follows Natalia, who's a doctor who's working at an orphanage. But really it's about her grandfather and how she sees her grandfather and his stories of his childhood, which are really bookended by two big narratives, the Deathless Man and the Tiger's Wife,

with a bit of jungle book thrown in there too. I think that's a very good way of describing the book. And obviously the book's written, you know, I say it's written differently, but it feels to me like it's almost written in a kind of folklore fairy tale way. I don't know if you felt the same way, Kieran. Absolutely. This felt,

and I think that was a very deliberate thing that it really did. You can tell that she's a short story writer because it really works in that mode of taking you in and then just letting you go enough to go and have a breather. and then the narrative picks up again. And I have to say, out of all the books, this one, I read this when this first came out,

this is the only one I'd read before this talk. And it wasn't what I remembered. It was a lot stranger than I remembered. And also I felt like Natalia was a lot more of a cipher to me. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I think after being immersed so he I'd read fugitive pieces just before it. It came as quite jarring to have these two removes of Natalia and then the grandfather telling his story.

I really, it really estranged it in quite an interesting way for me. Paula, what did you make of the book? It's very jarrenly different to the others in that it's very much focused on the supernatural. And I think that really comes through and is a different way. of thinking about displacement and war and the reverberating impact, rather than, you know, us being placed in the middle of it, or at least being spectators, there's a really fantastical element that's brought through, which I'm not used to, actually, no, tell a lie,

I love, like, I love, you know, Game of Thrones and Tommy Adyemi's, oh my God, children of blood and bone. I love that kind of fantastical. I do love a fantastical element, but I guess it, in this book it was, I guess, a little bit charing. And at times I didn't really expect it or I didn't know what to do with it, especially like Kieran, I had just read fugitive pieces as well. So it was a bit of a move to make mentally. Right. And I think it's really interesting because this book, you know, apparently depicts the most recent wars out of all the three books, you know, the Balkan conflict. And yet at the same time, you never really get more detail or specificity than that. So Belgrade, for instance, is just called the city. And if you aren't familiar with, you know,

the Balkans or the conflict, then you might, you could almost be reading a kind of fairy tale about fictional conflict in a city. Did you feel that way, Hannah? Yeah, a little bit. I definitely got the like folklore, fairy tale. vibes and I didn't realize she was a short short story author so that makes so much sense to me. I'm like, oh yeah, because it does feel like lots of little short stories that are kind of interwoven. I don't normally sit well with magical realism a lot of the time. I normally find it quite jarring, but this time it just kind of like swallowed me up completely. Like I loved like all of the different stories and all of the different narratives in it.

And I think within all of these books, as they're about war, death obviously plays a key role and is mentioned and is featured. But like death is, death feels like a character in this book and death feels like such a monumental theme in this one, which I really loved the like exploration of that. Right. Because obviously, there's a character that Natalia's grandfather goes on, you know, to spend his life searching for the deathless man. And I kind of want to know, is this, is this deathless man meant to be death himself? You know, how much of this kind of story that his grand, her grandfather's telling her, how much of it is, you know, him making stuff up and, you know, entertaining a little kid.

And how much of it is stuff that he genuinely believes. What do you think, Hannah? What Natalia's grandfather tells her, and this is what he says the deathless man tells him, death is his uncle. And, you know, do with that what you will. I kind of, when it comes to these kinds of storylines, I enjoy like going with it and taking everything at face value and kind of seeing it in that light and then kind of going back to it and being like,

oh, let's pick this apart of it. So yeah, I really enjoyed it. I don't know where I stand on if it was just a story he told her or if this was actually a man that he met multiple times. And obviously the scenarios in which he was meeting this man, like, were within a war and within, like, all of this, like, heightened stuff going on around him.

So it's just like how much are you a reliable narrative? And the second time he meets him, he doesn't even see him. He just has a conversation and can just hear his voice. So, yeah, is he a reliable narrator when it comes to the deathless? man. But I enjoy I enjoyed the fantastical element of it. I enjoyed what we learned about death and people's

responses and attitudes towards death through that character, whether he was real or not. I really loved his function in the story and it's almost irrelevant to me as the reader if he's real or not. Like that didn't matter to me. Right. Because I think we've all been in situations where, you know, our parents or grandparents have told us things that town sound a little bit fantastical and fake and you're like, is this real or is this meant to communicate some kind of

like metaphor to me? Like I always remember my mother telling me when I was a little kid that, you know, if you walk past a palm tree or coconut tree, the tree has eyes and that's why they never, the coconuts never fall on someone's head and kills them. Oh my God. Love it. which you know take it with a pinch of salt it might be real it might be not Paula

Paula did you your parents ever tell you anything strange and fantastical like this oh my God I wish that it would have made such a difference to my childhood I know I think the only standard thing was when

a bird when my dad was walking me to kindergarten and a bird took a shit in my hood and you know, that's good luck. You're very welcome. And I was just like a child, so I didn't really understand, but I think that's it. But I do love how much you can learn about cultural norms and how much history is passed down via word of mouth and also via folklore and how it manages to

encompass, like, bits of your upbringing or bits of your culture or, but, but, proverbs that have just been handed down and still serve a function as, you know, a word of caution or just a tip to love, etc. So I do, even if we can't, you know, take it for face value, I do love how much it still shows us about where we come from or what has been handed down to us. Kieran, what did you make of the, you know, the tiger significance in the book? You know, did you think that it was meant to be a stand in or a metaphor for something much deeper than just, you know, this tiger escaped outside the village and her grandfather, Natalia's grandfather, was really obsessed with it. I think it just operates on all levels that you could possibly want it to. I think I remember reading it the first time actually a lot straighter than, than I read it this time.

And so I was saying, oh, it's a metaphor for war. You know, I was a teenager, so I was like trying to look for all the deep meanings. And this time I really just let myself go with it and found that as a reader, I didn't care, whether it was a metaphor or not. It was real because people believed it was real. And I think there's so much about stories, you know, what endures of stories of is what we need to hear. and whether that's a warning or a comfort, I think the tiger operates, operated as both those things.

You know, it was this real thing of an object of fear for most of the villages, but for Natalia's grandfather, who maybe felt himself to be a bit outside everything, it became this talisman, this totem, and I really enjoyed that, that even within the book, Teobrit was like saying, read this how you want because my characters do. So I really admired it for that ambiguity, actually.

And here's our final judge for today's Reading Women episode. This is Bettany Hughes on why the Tiger's wife won the prize in 2011. Because what it is, it's a story about a young woman growing up as a child, as a teenager, and then as a 20-year-old in the war-torn Balkans. So basically it's a story about living through war. But she tells that story surrounded by the stories that she was told by her grandfather. So the book sort of slips in and out that sometimes it's very much in the heat and horror of war. And then you suddenly hear this story that's being told about what was happening in that place 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Magical realism can sound off-putting, but it's an incredibly easy read. But it's so smart because you never quite know whether what you're reading is a story. So we just completely fell in love with it, never having heard of her before, not expecting to like it. Remember, you can head to our website to find out more about the Reading Women Challenge and you can vote for your favourite women's prize winning novel of the last 25 years and crown your winner of winners. I mean, these books were published in, you know, 1997 for Fugitive Pieces, 2011 and 2007 for half of a yellow sun.

So do you think that, you know, they kind of sit within a very specific historical context? or do you still think they feel relevant today, more or less so? What did you think, Paula? Do you think that you could tell in a way that fugitive pieces is written in 97? Honestly, I couldn't at all. And I think that's the thing about historical fiction. It doesn't matter how far back it is. If it's written well, it will capture you.

And I think also just because these wars or these events, may have taken place decades ago, we're still feeling the impact or at least the, you know, the descendants of people like Jacob, etc. Like they are still like Hannah and Kieran, you're still feeling the impact. There's still that secondhand guilt and, you know, still wanting to find out more answers from family members. So I don't think they'll ever be irrelevant, especially when we didn't live through these times. So I guess we're trying to gather as many scraps and pieces from people who did or at least retellings of people's real life experiences. And I think that's a really beautiful way to sum up the approach of historical fiction, isn't it?

You know, at its best, it feels completely timeless even though they try and depict really specific instances in time. Absolutely. I completely agree. I think if a piece of historical fiction is doing its work well, you will always feel in encompassed within the narrative and it will still feel as fresh as it does and I'm sure continue, we'll always continue to for people who have lived through, you know, instances of civil war or displacement. And Hannah, did any of the books change your opinion or perspective about anything? Do you feel or know differently about different parts of history than you did before you read them? Yeah, I guess as I mentioned with half of the son just really being so clueless about that history and that and about the existence of Biafra,

even if it was really short-lived. So yeah, it's this weird combination of the, you know, you're reading a novel, but I also felt like I was getting a bit of a history lesson. Kieran, what about you? Did you feel like that any of the books changed your opinion on anything? Maybe they grew my opinion on things and deepened sort of my feeling on things. I think, yeah, I absolutely learned so much from all of these books. But I think the most valuable thing I took from them was a real, I felt a real,

especially a fugitive peters and half a yellow sun, a real stretching in my chest. Like, I know that sounds like a cliche, but I care a lot more. and I think that the empathy is such so important and that is something that books grow better than anything and those were two of the most honestly extraordinary reading experiences I've had in a really long time and I think that's so important that to make people, people and not just symbols is so important in preventing further war.

So I wanted to ask, which book do you think you're all remorse? member in the years to come, which one do you think you'll end up recommending to people the most? Paula? I think definitely fugitive pieces. I just, it blew my mind. And I think it, at the beginning, I wasn't sure if I was going to get into it, but I was swept away by, um, and Michael's just pen. Like the power of that pen, incredible. So yeah, I will be recommending fugitive pieces. What about you, Kieran?

Yeah, same fugitive pieces was just staggering. Like, as a story, you know, I think it's easy to talk about things as literature, but this was just an incredible story. And it's one that I really want everyone I know to read so that I can

sort of talk about it or not talk about it and just stare at each other going, whoa, that was good, right? That's why you recommend books so that you can be like, I need to talk with someone about this. Exactly. I mean, that's the entire point of a book club, to be honest. What about you, Hannah?

Yeah, so controversially, I struggled with fugitive pieces. Like, I just found it quite dense and also I'm not very good with poetry. That is of just a personal thing where I just struggle. I'm quite a literal person. So there was lots of it

that just completely washed over me and I found it quite difficult to penetrate in parts but the bits that I did manage I was like oh my God I understood that I got that like were really magical but if I know that a friend is more into like books that have a poetic language I would recommend that but I think in general

if I had to pick one as a universal recommendation it would be half of a yellow sun if I knew a friend had a magical realism kind of interest, then it would be the tiger's wife. But the universal one I think would be half of yellow sun just because it's just, it just picks you up and for this light and straps you in for an absolute, like, journey with just brilliant characters,

but with this, like, devastating backdrop. That was so gloriously diplomatic. Yeah, beautiful. I try. I like how you've also tailored it for every single type of friend you might have who wants to have a different reading experience. It's a very good book club recommendation. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much all of you guys for joining me on the podcast. It's the last ever reading women episode. So you are the three crowning guests. Oh, yes. Honour to see out the year. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. I'm Zing Singh, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media.

2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Women's Prize for Fiction, and we want you to join in the conversation around a quarter of the century of phenomenal winning books, from Ali Smith's How to Be Both to Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. Have your say and vote now for your overall winner of winners to be crowned later in November with a celebratory digital event. plus you'll be able to buy a special edition of their winning book. All you have to do is head to Women's Prize for Fiction.com.uk and click on the green vote to pick your favourite winning book. Please click subscribe and don't forget to rate and review this podcast. It really helps to spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today.

Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.