How Much of These Hills are Gold
★★★★★ C Pam Zhang Little Brown R320
QUICK QUESTIONS
What was your reaction after being longlisted for the Booker prize?
Absolute shock. It’s both something I’ve always wanted and something I didn’t expect. I know it sounds contradictory, but contradiction is the only way I know how to survive as a writer. The journey of a book is so gruelling. I must simultaneously believe I’m writing the best novel ever written — how else could I get through it? — and assume that noone will ever read it.
Are you working on anything now, or do you have anything planned?
Yes, but I’m too superstitious to say anything about it!
Has the Covid pandemic changed the way you think, work and read?
I’ve been reading even more poetry, because I often want that quick, direct shock to my system. At first I had difficulty reading book-length works. As for writing, I’ve found myself becoming somewhat defiant in my insistence that we not look at this time trapped indoors as productive time. Art doesn’t follow a capitalist clock. You don’t need to get out a plague novel. You can just live and feel your feelings and be a human.
What is the one takeaway you want readers to have from reading your book?
It is ferociously lonely to live as an immigrant, but there is beauty and splendour too. So often immigrants see the world with a bit more clarity, a bit more wonder, because they are aware of how tenuous their connection to it is.
Were you always a natural storyteller?
I’ve always written, but I’m bad at telling stories in person. I can’t think without the page.
The ending leaves the book open for a sequel. Is this a possibility?
Most good endings are somewhat open; you want the characters so whole that they live a life beyond the page. If I write a sequel, it will be not a direct one but more spiritual. I’m interested in the emotional territory of this book, but no longer its physical world.