Books Writing best medicine for this doctor
Morad Zaffron spoke to SANTHAM PILLAY about his debut novel
It was a Superman comic my father got me from a book exchange store. My entry into the incredible world of books began with superheroes and super-villains locked in heroic battles across time and space. The first serious book I read was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It was how I met the most bewitching girl in the world, Estella Havisham. She was the first girl I fell in love with and the only girl I loved and hated at the same time.
I am a fickle lover when it comes to books, always falling in love with another one. But, right now, my favourite is Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It is an amazing epic — so grand in its sweeping view of India and its people.
CNA in West Street, Durban. As a little boy growing up during apartheid, there were few places I could visit to read the latest books since libraries were scarce. One day I stepped into this bookstore in town. There were white faces all around but nobody looked at me or stopped me when I entered, wide-eyed and openmouthed. It was a veritable candy store of print media. I would make the bus ride from Chatsworth into town every Saturday morning and spend a small lifetime going from one end of the store to the other.
JRR Martin, author of Game of Thrones. He has such a vast and boundless imagination, such a skill for the grandeur of fantasy that his writing takes my breath away. I would ask him, though, to bring along Gregory David Roberts. We would feast on fantasy, on the magic realism of India and the bounty of food dished up for us. It would be complete only if I had my wife and children at the table.
In the opening pages of The Cure, Dr Vincent Bach says: “For those of an open mind, our world abounds with miracles. After all, the inventors of the cellphone and television were considered madmen once.” This quote encapsulates all that is good and all that is flawed in modern life.
Without a doubt, Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. I identified with
Without music, I don’t think I could write a single sentence of value. About the time I began writing The Cure , my wife bought me Gabrielle’s Dreams Can Come True. I fell in love with the songs Dreams and Out of Reach. I listened to this album night and day and wrote without stopping.
Author, without a doubt. Writing is in my soul. It is as essential to me as breathing. I would take a day off work, but never a day off writing.