Jones bringing modern fable to Ma¯pua
The Ma¯ pua Literary Festival is set to host some of New Zealand’s greatest authors, with Lloyd Jones being no exception.
Jones had his first book published in the early 1980s, when he was 29, and hasn’t stopped putting pen to paper since, with his most recent release, The Cage, hitting shop shelves early last year.
He said the contemporary fable, which addresses the global refugee situation, would be his starting point for his talk at the festival.
The inspiration for the story came from ‘‘a holiday that became something else’’, he said.
‘‘We were in Budapest at the time the Syrian refugees were being contained and held at one of the main (railway) stations. All these people had train tickets, but the leader of Hungary at the time chose to detain them because of a small technicality.
‘‘Under EU rules, any refugee arriving in Europe is supposed to be registered in their place of landfall. It is one of those things where your path just crosses with one of the great storylines, certainly to emerge in the last few years.’’
Jones walks around with his eyes wide open, ready for an idea to be sparked by his surroundings. He calls it being ‘‘in a steady state of awareness’’.
‘‘You’re alert to story possibilities everywhere. The world washes over you, and some things catch,’’ he said.
Jones’s most recognised book, Mister Pip, earned the author a number of honours, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry, and the Kiriyama Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
In 2012, it was made into a film of the same name, starring English actor Hugh Laurie.
For readers, and possibly those who would rather watch a movie over reading the book, it sounds like a great achievement, but Jones had mixed emotions about seeing his story on the big screen.
‘‘It’s a strange experience, because these people began in my head – then suddenly, there they are, fleshed out on the screen. It’s a kind of jarring moment.’’
He said that when a book was brought to life in the cinema, it was just one person’s perception of the characters, which were often nothing like how the readers pictured them.
‘‘It’s sometimes in conflict with what a reader imagined. I certainly found that to be the case [with Mister Pip].
Anyone who read the book will probably have the same response.’’
A highlight for him, he said, was that the film’s director, Andrew Adamson, had a real understanding for the setting of the book in Papua New Guinea.
‘‘He had a good feel for it, as he had grown up in PNG and he was fluent in pidgin, so he was an excellent choice. He had a good rapport with the place and the people.’’
Amongst his ‘‘usual writing projects’’ he is keeping mum about, Jones’s next release is a collaboration on a series of ‘‘picture books for adults’’. It involves writers, artists and poets working together on a series of art books published by Massey University Press.
The first book in the series, due out next March, is a collaboration between Jones and New Zealand-born Australian artist Euan Macleod.
‘‘I think it’s going to get a bit of interest and attention.’’
Jones said it was ‘‘fabulous’’ that the small community of Ma¯ pua was putting on the literary festival, which will feature leading New Zealand writers and poets including Ashleigh Young, Carl Shuker and Jenny Bornholdt.
‘‘I think it’s terrific.’’
‘‘You’re alert to story possibilities everywhere.’’
The Volume Ma¯ pua Literary Festival runs from September 20 to 22. For more information and tickets, visit www.volume.nz.