‘I’d never adapt another novel for film, TV, or stage’
Print Edition
Sebastian Faulks, the author, most recently, of “A Possible Life” and “Jeeves and the Wedding Bells,” says literary novels tend to make bad movies: “One form is all inward; the other is two-dimensional.”
What’s your favorite book of the year?
“The People Smuggler” by Robin de Crespigny. It’s about an Iraqi dissident Ali Al Jenabi who as a teenager joins the uprising against Saddam Hussain after the first Iraq war in 1991. He’s captured by the secret police, sent to Abu Ghraib and tortured. He watches his father tortured to insanity and thrown into a pit. He sees his kid brother dismembered. When he gets out, he joins anti-Saddam forces in Kurdistan, then tries to get his remaining family out of Iraq. The numerous reverses and betrayals make the plot of “Les Misérables” look like plain sailing. In Indonesia, he finds the operation for shipping refugees to Australia so useless and corrupt that he decides to run it himself. He’s eventually tried and imprisoned in Australia for “people smuggling.” This is an astonishing story, at times barely credible, but very unsettling. In the same week, I read Norman Lewis’s war diary, “Naples ‘44,” an account of his time as an intelligence officer in a city where everyone was starving and two-thirds of the women of nubile age were selling their bodies. It is a wonderful book, droll, shocking and humane.
Having written one of the post-Ian Fleming Bond books, you must have opinions on 007. Which is your favorite?
I like the climactic scene in “Live and Let Die” when Bond and the girl are towed behind a speedboat as shark bait. I lost interest in the films after Sean Connery.
Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite?
“Human Traces” is the one I would want to be buried with. It’s long and it has some sticky parts, including a couple of lectures. But I like it because it deals with the great theme: Why are human beings so odd — and so much odder than any evolutionary theory can explain.
It took me five years’ research in musty libraries and psychiatric back wards, including a day at Broadmoor high-security hospital, but I never lost my belief that these tangled lives were both worth fighting for and highly instructive.
I visited three continents and met inspiring people, both patients and doctors. Sometimes writing fiction is very technical, to do with finding the voices, tones and registers that best articulate your themes; I love all that, but there is no doubt that if you have a crusading purpose, it puts extra fire in your belly. For that reason I would also want “Birdsong” to be there. My younger readers would vote for “Engleby.” But it’s my funeral, so I’m going with “Human Traces.”
Your novels have been adapted for TV, film and stage. Describe those experiences.
If I had my time again, knowing what I know now, I would not adapt my books into different media. But once you get drawn in, it’s hard to stop. This is partly because you get legally tangled up in long option periods; partly because the challenge is intriguing; and partly because when you have sat on your own in a silent room for 20 years, the idea of colleagues and meetings becomes attractive.
Literary novels generally make bad movies.
One form is all inward; the other is two-dimensional. So why are we seduced by the idea that this time it will be different?
Are there surprising books on your shelves?
“Sex Tips for Girls,” by Cynthia Heimel. I think someone must have left it there.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
