Detective novelists draw on real life
Authors from India and Sweden share experiences at Sharjah book fair
sharjah — India’s culture-rooted crimes and Sweden’s back side problems have found their way to the pages of detective novels to expose what is sometimes unseen by the rest of society.
Speaking at the 32nd Sharjah International Book Fair, Kishwar Desai of India and Carin Gerhardsen of Sweden told audiences they have explored the social depths of society in their novels to expose the real problems, why crimes are committed and what needs to be done to resolve them.
Desai said his detective stories are ‘social thrillers’ exposing modern- day crimes that look at what is actually happening in Indian society. “My father is an honest cop so I have experiences at looking very closely at crimes. Though we have to move from place to place because it seems people do not like honest cops, the experience has also given me the opportunity to write my stories based on what is happening in various areas of India.”
A journalist and former TV presenter and producer for 25 years, Desai shifted her career to writing detective novels at the time she be- came very angry that multitudes of baby girls across India were being killed. “What made me very angry was that families who killed their baby girls went unpunished.”
Her first novel, “Witness the Night” based on the culture killing of baby girls won her the Costa Book Award in 2010 for Best First Novel, has been translated into 25 languages. It was shortlisted for the Author’s Club First Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize.
She said her second novel, “Origins of Love”, took a close look at surrogacy and adoption and was published in 2012.
This exposed the business of renting wombs of Indian women to bear children for childless affluent families. “My third book is again based on the gang rape issue in India, with accounts in New Delhi and UK to make it (global).” This latest novel “The Sea of Innocence” has been published in India, the UK and Australia. Desai also has a biography “Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt” to her credit.
Gerhardsen started writing philosophical novels with 2,000 copies and gave up writing to take up a job as a mathematician at an IT company in Sweden. After she got married, her husband encouraged her to go back to writing. This time, she was looking at the cases handled by her father working as a Swedish court judge.
From this came a good series of detective novels which spawned a TV series, though she still does not want to give up her philosophical ambitions. “When I decided to focus on writing crimes, I told myself my stories should be gripping to the readers. I also decided that I should be very trustworthy and credible as a detective novelist.”
All her six detective novels, which have been a product of a good police teams, have been translated in 22 languages, published and distributed across the world. “I have taken up social problems, including gang (rape) and crimes committed against children. They make detective novels as chilling as they should be. The more you hate the crime, the more eager you want the crime resolved. Exposing them in detective novels can help the society because most of these crimes are not seen by the rest of the society.”
Suad Youself Saeed, who chaired the panel, said he hoped to see the books of both popular detective novelists translated into Arabic.