Author Q & A
Here is a full author Q&A about LITTLE BEE / THE OTHER HAND – everything from the true stories surrounding the novel right through to discussion of its characters and themes. These are the questions that readers and interviewers have been asking me, and I’ve tried to answer them as best as I can. I hope you’ll find this helpful.
Thanks to all the readers who’ve sent me questions. Thanks to Bond Street Books and Simon & Schuster for their input too. Special thanks to Daniel Goldin at Boswell Books – some of the best questions are from an interview I did with him. If you have any suggestions for how I can make this page more useful, please let me know via email or via the comments box. If you or your book club have a question, I’ll do my best to answer it. If you’ve arrived at this page you’ve come quite far, so thank you for being interested.
Is the novel based on a true story?
No, but there’s one true story in particular that made me determined to write the novel. In 2001 an Angolan man named Manuel Bravo fled to England and claimed asylum on the grounds that he and his family would be persecuted and killed if they were returned to Angola. He lived in a state of uncertainty for four years pending a decision on his application. Then, without warning, in September 2005 Manuel Bravo and his 13-year-old son were seized in a dawn raid and interned at an Immigration Removal Centre in southern England. They were told that they would be forcibly deported to Angola the next morning. That night, Manuel Bravo took his own life by hanging himself in a stairwell. His son was awoken in his cell and told the news. What had happened was that Manuel Bravo, aware of a rule under which unaccompanied minors cannot be deported from the UK, had taken his own life in order to save the life of his son. Among his last words to his child were: “Be brave. Work hard. Do well at school.”
It’s quite common for novels to change titles when they cross the Atlantic. I like both the titles the novel is published under. “The Other Hand” is a good title because it speaks to the dichotomous nature of the novel, with its two narrators and two worlds, while it also references Sarah’s injury. “Little Bee” is a good title too, because the novel is really Little Bee’s story, so it’s a straightforward and an honest title. Also I like it because it sounds bright and approachable – and my aim with this novel was to write an accessible story about a serious subject. I like the fact that the novel has two titles. I like it when divergent choices are simultaneously right. While we’re on the subject, I like my name. I think “cleave” might be unique in having two synonyms that are antonyms of each other. You see? I’m doomed…
Did you have a personal reason to write the novel?
Yes, there was a chance encounter that really shook me up. Around fifteen years ago I was working as a casual labourer over the university summer vacation, and for three days I worked in the canteen of Campsfield House in Oxfordshire. It’s a detention centre for asylum seekers – a prison, if you like, full of people who haven’t committed a crime. I’d been living within ten miles of the place for three years and didn’t even know it existed. The conditions in there were very distressing. I got talking with asylum seekers who’d been through hell and were likely to be sent back to hell. Some of them were beautiful characters and it was deeply upsetting to see how we were treating them. When we imprison the innocent we make them ill, and when we deport them it’s often a death sentence. I knew I had to write about it, because it’s such a dirty secret. And I knew I had to show the unexpected humour of these refugees wherever I could, and to make the book an enjoyable and compelling read – because otherwise people’s eyes would glaze over.
Was it your intention to change people’s minds about asylum seekers?
Readers are smart and I’m not in the business of lecturing them. I see my job as providing new information in an entertaining way. Readers will then use that information as the spirit moves them. I think the job is important because there’s something you can do in fiction that you don’t have the space to do in news media, which is to give back a measure of humanity to the subjects of an ongoing story. When I started to imagine the life of one asylum seeker in particular, rather than asylum seekers in general, the scales fell from my eyes in regard to any ideological position I might have held on the issue. It’s all about exploring the mystery and the wonder of an individual human life. Life is precious, whatever its country of origin.
What could Little Bee do if she was allowed to stay as a permanent citizen?
I think Little Bee could do anything she set her mind to, because by definition she is a survivor. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, we thought of asylum seekers as heroes. The hundreds who died while trying to cross the Berlin Wall, for example. Or the pilots, performers and scientists who defected from the Soviet Union. Or the heroes of previous generations – Sigmund Freud, who fled to London to escape the Nazis, or Anne Frank, who could not flee far enough. Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Joseph Conrad – all of them refugees – I could go on and on. When horror and darkness descend, asylum seekers are the ones who get away. They are typically above average in terms of intellectual gifts, far-sightedness, motivation and resilience. These are the people you want to have on your side. It will be a monument to our hubris if we allow ourselves to start thinking of them as a burden.
The quote is “Britain is proud of its tradition of providing a safe haven for people fleeting [sic] persecution and conflict.” I took it from Life in the United Kingdom, which is the text book given to immigrants preparing for their citizenship test in the UK. It covers British history, government and etiquette. It offers the excellent advice “If you spill a stranger’s drink by accident, it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another.” Less gloriously, though, its summary of British history is rather selective, and the work as a whole is riddled with inaccuracies and typographical errors. My belief is that if a refugee is prepared to walk away from a regime that has imprisoned and tortured her, flee to the UK, apply for asylum, and commit to memory the contents of the text book we make compulsory for her, then for our part we should at least be prepared to have that text book professionally copy-edited. The typo in that opening quotation is a nice example of a bureaucracy that is pretending to care, but not pretending very hard.
Are refugee detention centres a necessary evil? Given the chance, what would you change about them?
I hope all evil is unnecessary. Most of the UK immigration detention centres are run for private profit by secretive companies. So, firstly, I’d take the profit motive out of detaining asylum seekers – because they are human beings, not a cash crop for investors. Second, I’d limit the time for which asylum seekers can be detained. As it stands they can be held in the detention system for a long time – sometimes for years – while the Home Office shuffles their paperwork. This destroys their mental health. Thirdly I’d stop the detention of refugee children. The UK Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote in a 2008 report: “The plight of detained children remained of great concern. While child welfare services had improved, an immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for children and we were dismayed to find cases of disabled children being detained and some children spending large amounts of time incarcerated.” That same report also stated: “Escort vehicles with caged compartments were inappropriately used to transport children.” Surely I’m not the only one who wants to cry when they read that.
Has your depiction of the immigration detention centre got you into any hot water in the UK?
No, not at all. First, because the UK is still one of the best places in the world to practice the art of free speech. That’s something truly great about Great Britain, and it’s a civil right we defend through regular exercise. We don’t have a constitution or a bill of rights to enshrine it, so we must practice it in our lives until it becomes an inbred instinct of a free people. Second, I think my depiction of a British immigration detention centre is accurate in the salient respects. It’s based on research and it would be hard to take issue with it on factual grounds, so people haven’t. That’s not to say that everyone likes me for doing it, but frankly that’s their problem and not mine. The British treatment of asylum seekers brings shame and ignominy on the nation. I didn’t invent that treatment. I’m trying to focus attention on it.
How did writing Little Bee differ from your experience with your previous works?
I’ve only published one previous novel, which is called Incendiary (2005). Incendiary is about the emotional climate that brought us the “War on Terror”. As a writer one is easily frightened when the West declares war on a noun, but at the time I felt it acutely because our first child had just been born and I hated the way our elected leaders were so clearly making his world a more dangerous place. When I get scared it tends to come out as dark comedy, or layered irony – anyway, Incendiary was how it came out. I wrote the draft in six weeks in early 2004, after the Madrid bombings and while the Abu Ghraib torture story was breaking. I went into a room in Paris with a coffee maker and a radio and I came out six weeks later with a beard and a manuscript, not really knowing how I’d done it.
The new novel [Little Bee / The Other Hand] came out of a sense of my own complicity in some of the evils of the world. I’d moved on from considering myself as an outraged – and blameless – observer, which I guess is where I was at with Incendiary. A year on, I realised that people like me are often part of the problem. I began to think about my life, and how it is relatively easy, and how it is therefore relatively easy to ignore the suffering of others. And since suffering is the rule rather than the exception in the world, it’s not an easy moral question to duck as a writer. So I decided to address it directly, by imagining the most striking example of someone who is dispossessed – Little Bee – coming to ask for a help from someone – Sarah – who is a little bit more like me. I never plot my work in advance, so I was very interested to discover how the moral ambiguities would play out.
As a writing task, this novel was harder than Incendiary. I did a year of research. I interviewed asylum seekers and people involved in their cases, I researched the oil conflict in Nigeria, and I familiarised myself with Nigerian English and Jamaican English. It was a lot of work before I even started writing. Then the book took nearly two years to write.
I’m able to do it because I have good readers. I can have my characters explore some fairly dark humour – for example, listing methods for a young Nigerian girl to kill herself at a garden party hosted by the Queen of England – while trusting my readers to understand that I am not making light of a serious theme. Rather, I am offering up a dark theme to the light, so that it may be examined. This is the only way I know to tell a serious story about current events without it becoming a lecture. And when I interviewed refugees and asylum seekers while researching this novel, I found that some of them use humour in this way too. These are people with very painful stories to tell. They have learned that in order to survive, they must get people in positions of power to listen to – and believe – their stories. And they have further learned that such people are more likely to listen if they make their stories entertaining, by showing the joy of their lives as well as the tragedy. They are the masters at telling their stories – because if they don’t get that balance right, they die. That’s motivation, right there. As far as storytelling goes, they’re playing in the major leagues. Novelists are amateurs by comparison.
Why does Little Bee talk about how she would have to explain things to “the girls back home”?
The “girls back home” are the novel’s Greek chorus – they are a foil in whose imagined reaction the cultural dissonance experienced by Little Bee can be made explicit. It’s a good device because it feels more natural than having Little Bee go around talking straight to camera and saying “Wow, I’m freaked out by this. And this. And this.” Much better for us to have Little Bee’s thoughts after she has understood the situation and can explain it to the “girls back home” from a position of superior knowledge. This allows us to appreciate the cultural gulf, whilst allowing the narrator to be knowing rather than tragic.
I look at human culture the same way science fiction does, but I look at it through the wrong end of the telescope. In sci-fi an ordinary protagonist discovers an extraordinary world, and the genre is exciting because of the emotional dissonance. But my thing is contemporary realism, so I’m always showing the ordinary world to what is effectively an extraterrestrial protagonist. It’s fun to do. Through this lens the most mundane events – Little Bee drinking a cup of tea in Sarah’s kitchen – acquire an immense significance and a certain beauty. Also, the things in our culture that are sad and ignoble – the fact, for example, that we can enjoy our freedom while imprisoning and deporting those who ask to share in it – appear in sharp focus through the eyes of an alien narrator. We have become accustomed to viewing our own actions in soft focus, but the alien narrator has not yet acquired this cultural immunity. She sees us as we can no longer see ourselves.
How do you expect readers to react to Andrew’s actions on the Nigerian beach?
I don’t have a preconception of how readers will react to that scene. My aim was to create a scene that was perfectly morally ambiguous, and in which the reader might quite justifiably side with either Andrew or Sarah. Andrew isn’t such a bad guy. What he fails to do on the beach is what most people would probably fail to do, myself included. Once Andrew realizes he’s made the wrong choice, it’s too late for him because the moment has passed and he is condemned to spend the rest of his days regretting that he failed life’s test. Sarah is lucky, really. She’s not inherently more moral than her husband, but just at that one critical moment she happened to do the right thing. This means that she can look back on her actions on the beach without too much guilt or shame. She can move on with the rest of her life while Andrew must enter a terminal decline. It’s ironic because Sarah’s infidelity is the reason the couple find themselves on the beach in the first place. And yet her premeditated affair goes unpunished by life, while Andrew’s momentary failure of courage dooms him forever. Life is savagely unfair. It ignores our deep-seated convictions and places a disproportionate emphasis on the decisions we make in split seconds.
Is Charlie/Batman based on your own children?
Charlie is based on our oldest boy, who was four years old when I started the book. For six months he would only answer to “Batman”. For a whole week I just listened to him and took dictation, which certainly beat going out to work for a living. Charlie’s “goodies / baddies” worldview is endearing but of course it’s naive and he’s not in the book as an example of an ideal morality. Charlie is in the novel for two reasons. First because he’s funny and loveable – he gives the novel an emotional centre; a reason for the adult protagonists to not simply walk away from the situation and disperse. Second, Charlie is a study in the early formation of identity. Little Bee is a novel about where our individuality lies – which layers of identity are us, and which are mere camouflage. So it’s a deliberate choice to use the metaphor of a child who is engaging in his first experiments with identity – in Charlie’s case by taking on the persona of a superhero.
After nearly two years with this project I realised that the strongest perspective would be a dual one. This is a story of two worlds: the developed and the developing, and of the mutual incomprehension that sometimes dooms them to antagonism. So by taking one woman from each side of the divide, and investing each with a compulsion to understand the other, I was able to let the story unpack itself in the mind of the reader. This was a huge breakthrough for me. One shouldn’t underestimate the role of the reader in this novel. I wanted to write a story that was never made fully explicit; which relied on the reader’s interpretation of the characters’ dialogue. Once you trust the reader with the story, the writing is really fun to do.
It’s not without its technical challenges, of course. As a man it requires concentration to write from a female perspective, but I see that as an advantage. If I’m consciously writing someone so different from myself, then I’m protected from the trap of using my own voice to animate the character. It forces me to listen, to think, and to write more precisely. Using two narrators is difficult though. To differentiate their vocabulary, grammar and idioms is quite straightforward if you make an effort to understand and inhabit the characters, but the hard thing is how you handle the overlaps and the gaps in the characters’ knowledge. When both narrators have witnessed an event, which one will you choose to recount it? Or will you let both of them tell it, and play with their different perspectives on what they’ve seen? When you use your narrators in series, you need to work to make it not feel like a TV show with bad links between segments. But when you use them in parallel, you need to take pains to avoid the text feeling repetitive.
Add into the mix the fact that the story is not told in linear time – the first half of the book is working backwards into history, while the second half works forwards into the future – and it quickly gets complicated. The trick is to make it read smoothly. It’s scary how many drafts you go through till you achieve something that reads simply.
Why is Sarah so much harder to like than Little Bee?
I like Sarah, but I’m also glad when people don’t. I like them for not liking her, because it probably means they have a strong moral sense and don’t suffer fools gladly. But maybe they should give her a break. Sarah’s not perfect, that’s for sure. But actually when you look at what she does, it’s very noble. She sacrifices herself, both mentally and physically, in order to save the life of a stranger. To my mind that excuses a lot of her shitty behavior – the adultery, the cynical day job, the aloofness. By contrast her husband, Andrew, is a moral paragon in his world, and yet when real life suddenly arrives to test him, he is found wanting. I also think Sarah inevitably suffers by proximity to Little Bee, who is much easier to like. If Sarah is more twisted, I think it’s because her path through life has necessarily been more convoluted. Little Bee’s life is extremely harrowing but it is also very simple – she is swimming very hard against the current, struggling to survive and not to be swept away. Sarah doesn’t have the luxury of knowing in which direction she should swim. And so she takes some bad directions, makes some bad choices in her life, but ultimately her heart is good and she proves it.
Is the ending meant to be tragic or hopeful?
I trust the reader to have their own idea of the characters and of their destiny. The problem with novels is that they are like the real-life relationships they describe: they are readily begun, and they never reach a definitive end where the whole thing achieves completion. So, being quite committed to realism, I trust the reader to see that. I have unusually great readers, I think. I get lots of email that makes me realize the level they’re operating on, and that I can trust them more and more in my future work. I don’t need to lay everything out or make everything obvious. I like it when readers bring their own inner life to the party.
What other writers do you like?
I admire Cormac McCarthy most among the living writers. It’s hardly an original position to take, but what can I say? What can anyone say about a man who has given us such an incredible body of work over several decades and who can then, in his seventies, write “The Road”, a novel which would tip the scales when weighed against all of his previous work?
I also like writers who can make me laugh while telling a compelling story. For this reason I love the work of John Steinbeck. It’s his little novels I like more than the important ones. Whenever I’m feeling low I go back and read the scene from Cannery Row where Doc orders a beer milkshake.
There are also some writers whose work I like and who aren’t as widely read as I think they should be. I think Howard Jacobson is among the greatest British writers, and his novel “Kalooki Nights” is one of the best of the last ten years. Alex Wheatle writes superb stories steeped in the street life and the vernacular of South London, and his new novel “The Dirty South” is excellent. And Ross Raisin is definitely one to watch in Britain. He’s an excellent writer with strong principles, and his first book “God’s Own Country” is great.
Why do you write novels anyway?
I do it because I don’t know much about the world and I want to find out more. I enjoy the work of educating myself through research, and then I enjoy the process of writing. Novels are incredibly intricate engines, and if you change one little piece here, it can throw the whole thing out of equilibrium way over there. So you spend half your time with tweezers and a jeweler’s eyepiece, and the other half with safety goggles and a lump hammer. And eventually, usually around three in the morning, the thing just clicks into gear and runs. It’s the most uplifting feeling. I get it about once every three years.
Entries (RSS)
Hi Chris,
I really enjoyed your book Little Bee. My friend gave it to me. We disagree on the ending. I think it is hopeful, she thinks the soldiers kill Little Bee. Who is right or are we both right in our own opinions????????
Thank you in advance.
Hi Chris,
just to say to you: thanks for this beautiful novel!
You have inspired and touched me a lot!
Kind regards, Filip
Chris, I was captivated by your book Little Bee and read it through the night on a flight from JFK to Berlin. Most powerful was the ending. You left me hanging, forcing me to decide and take into account so many emotional and moral poionts you raised in the story to get closure. But does one ever have closure in life? One reader, who posted, questioned whether Lawrence made Little Bee call the police when Charlie is lost to push her to sacrifice herself and save him. I think she may be right as I found him far from easy to like. He, more than anyone, had his own particuar modus operande professionally and personally, which was ironically dictated by the system you expose. This is most unfortunate for the two female heroines. As I read the book, I could not help thinking about Helen Oyeyemi, the young British authoress, who was born in Nigeria and wrote The Icarus Girl. Little Bee and her discussions with her sister reminded me very much of Helen’s protagonist living with geister. I wonder how she made it to Britain? If you do not know her, try to meet her. You would have so much to talk about. And, if you should ever come to Berlin, please let me know. I know several people in book groups and am going to try to get one of the groups to read your book and join. Thank you for a soulful provoking read. Looking forward to more., Best, Linda
Many years ago while at collage I met Africans from various countries, they were free and there to study but missed home very much and were glad to meet kindred spirits who took time to speak and pray for them, specially when they had the impression of Britain as a land where people who did not care. Thank you for caring and writing this book and showing us ourselves and giving us an insight into the plight of these souls who are intrinsically no different from ourselves. How superior we are if we can close our eyes or ears to our brothers and sister, fathers and mothers.
I couldn’t put “Little Bee” down and finished it in less time than I’ve read any other book. Your writing style, the use of mystery, what is unspoken, pushed me further and further into the story. Thank you for this compelling work of truth, not “fiction”.
thank you for a wonderful book, however, it left me wanting – for more.
I started reading your book, and did not want to stop until I had finished. My emotions were brought to the surface on so many levels; the sadness; anger over Bee’s horrific suffering as an innocent girl who fled from violence and injustice only to find more of it in her escape. The story makes me very grateful for the life I am able to live in a free society; but also saddens me that persons more fortunate than others treat one another so inhumanly. Thank you for bringing this situation into print so we must all realize these things actually go on and not close our eyes to it.
Hi Chris,
I just finished reading your novel which I really loved. Has “the other hand” been translated in other languages? I usally share books I like with my mother but she reads in Italian only…
Keep on writing, I hope to read more from you.
Hi Raffaella, thank you! And yes, there is an Italian translation coming very soon. All best wishes, Chris
The ending is so hard…Little Bee dies deliberately holding a beautiful vision and also prepared with a premonition (the dream of her sister returning from the ocean with her Hawaiian print shirt)…does she die as hard as her sister did? is it an “automatic” death as her sister suffered, at the end not even consciously knowing what was happening? Did the soldiers give her a break? And did her sister retain her beautiful vision to the end ( she seems to have for a while but then gave way to the automatic sounds later echoed by Andrew while dying in the presence of Little Bee? Unbelievably touching and disturbing work of art.
I just finished listening to the CD–I loved it too–the story and the acting. The voices really made it come alive for me; this was a great listen. Will be recommending it to my bookclub too, but I have a funny feeling, there will be others who will also recommend it! As for the ending, I really want something good for Little Bee, and being an optimist, will go with that approach to it. If I use that reasoning, then I can hope for a sequel!!
Chris – I just finished your book and was floored by the ending… Both hopeful, as Little Bee has hope for Charlie’s future (and us all) and tragic, as she has given her life for the child and knows that she faces the impending doom of “the men” that has terrified her throughout the story. The ending is even more tragic and even ironic, as throughout the book Little Bee always plans out her suicide in any situation and ultimately doesn’t take that option (swim out to sea, as the soldier does after the demise of Kindness). I wanted a happy ending
, but thank you for a beautiful and bittersweet ending. I’m still sad/happy and will be for a long time.
Re: men and women. I find Andrew’s choice very male and Sarah’s choice very maternal. I had no idea how powerful (meaning absolute) the urge to throw myself in front of a train/tiger/etc. would be until I too became a mother. It isn’t a choice – it’s an instinct. My apologies to all the men out there – I’m not slamming you, it’s just an observation (and I’m not the only one)…
The Maternal Brain; January 2006; Scientific American Magazine; by Craig Howard Kinsley and Kelly G. Lambert; 8 Page(s)
“Mothers are made, not born. Virtually all female mammals, from rats to monkeys to humans, undergo fundamental behavioral changes during pregnancy and motherhood. What was once a largely self-directed organism devoted to its own needs and survival becomes one focused on the care and well-being of its offspring. Although scientists have long observed and marveled at this transition, only now are they beginning to understand what causes it. New research indicates that the dramatic hormonal fluctuations that occur during pregnancy, birth and lactation may remodel the female brain, increasing the size of neurons in some regions and producing structural changes in others.
Some of these sites are involved in regulating maternal behaviors such as building nests, grooming young and protecting them from predators. Other affected regions, though, control memory, learning, and responses to fear and stress. Recent experiments have shown that mother rats outperform virgins in navigating mazes and capturing prey. In addition to motivating females toward caring for their offspring, the hormone-induced brain changes may enhance a mother rat’s foraging abilities, giving her pups a better chance of survival. What is more, the cognitive benefits appear to be long-lasting, persisting until the mother rats enter old age.”
What to I do with this knowledge? Isn’t it a sin to just go on with my life without acting on what I know now? I can’t believe others are just willing to chalk it up to a good read and go on to the next book. I wish I had never read it.
Was thinking the exact same thing… become more mindful? grateful? active?
Just finished–I was dazzled by the way Chris Cleave could write himself into Sarah, a caring, thoughtful, inspirational WOMAN. Chris- you truly connected in your presentation of this lovely, sensitive lady. Little Bee went off the mark several times-but I forgive you.
Last night my book discussion group discussed Little Bee. Of course we were all debating what exactly happens at the end, and from the answers on the Q&A above I understand that it was left intentionally vague — we can all decide what the ending will be.
It was interesting to see what some members of the group picked up on that others did not because so much detail was mixed in with the tragedy it was hard to focus on everything. One person distinctly remembered the men on the beach drinking from a bottle and Sarah noticing what appeared to be an eye floating in that bottle. A few people remembered this detail when it was brought up. What was in the bottle? And why put the bottle in the narrative? Was it one more level of horror added to what was becoming a horrific situation?
I finished Little Bee about ten minutes ago and RAN to my computer to find your website!!! Thank you Chris Cleave, for opening my eyes to this buried secret, and for giving me a reason to be thankful today and every day for my freedom and my voice!!
I recommended Little Bee for our November Book Club meeting. I’m certain it will be an interesting and heated discussion. So many layers. Little Bee will remain with all who read this book for many years to come. Having a son who, when 4 or so, spent months as Robin Hood made me adore Charlie. Thank you for writing one of the great books of our time.
Hi Chris,
I came across your book by accident really and so glad I did. What an excellent read! I know there has been an American film version entitled “Little Bee”. Any plans in the pipeline for a film adaptation, here in the UK?
Last time I was in Berlin I visited Checkpoint Charlie and it was intresting to read everything and see everything at The escape museum. Next time Im also going to visit Sachenhausen, which is outside Berlin and is an old concentration camp aswell as the russians used it after WW2 for their prisoners.
Chris, is there any way you could give me your thoughts on what happened to little Bee in the end?
Dear Chris,
I finished “The Other Hand” about an hour ago and I felt truly sad to finish it. It is the first book in a long time that I have read in one day so thank you for that.
I also wanted to give a thumbs up for your nod to Maurice Sendack in the nursery scene where Charlie melts down over his lost father. I really enjoyed the parallel I drew in my mind between Sendack’s “Max” the costumed adventurer who may or may not be living in a fantasty world and the Batman costume of Charlie.
Thanks -
a new fan
Euan
Mr. Cleave,
Thank you for writing this moving and excellent story. I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed it. I’ll be discussing it with my book group tomorrow evening at **Boswell Books**, which I was happy to read you have a connection with that charming book shop.
Hi Emily – thank you! Hope book group goes well. Boswell Books is one of my all-time favourite book stores. I had a great visit in Milwaukee – everyone was so friendly. (Here is a video I made there last year). Is Daniel Goldin still running the show there? Please say hi from me!
Thank you Euan. I agree with you about Sendack. Max is an incredible character. And if possible, I like Mickey in ‘In The Night Kitchen’ even more.
Hi Adele – thank you – yes, there is a film version in the pipeline, which will be called ‘Little Bee’. It’s a joint project between BBC Films and a US production company, and it will be the one-and-only film adaptation. Nicole Kidman is set to play Sarah, Shawn Slovo is writing the screenplay, and that’s all I know at this moment. I’m really looking forward to it.
Just finished Little Bee and found it hard to put down. Looking forward to the film!
Thank you Shannon – I’m looking forward to the film too.
Hi Chris, I’m currently forming a research essay for my fourth year of University and have been thinking a lot about the politics of representation in regards to your wonderful book. There is always the temptation with (post) colonial literature, or indeed literature which deals with contemporary concerns regarding immigration etc, to assume that an effective or useful book (in terms of studying experience) requires an author to be truly representative of a collective’s or group’s own experience. I find that the dichotomy in the narration of the novel, and the lack of omniscience, allows for a shift from the sort of grand narratives of earlier literature to localised narratives, which in a sense allows for a deeper, more meaningful, and generally more emotional connection with the characters and their individual experiences. I therefore see Little Bee at once as an individual character with a specifically localised experience but simultaneously she seems to symbolise, alongside Sarah, a very general human experience of compassion and care for one’s fellow man or woman. I wondered how representational you find Little Bee of refugees, or indeed how representational Sarah is of the majority of us living in our Western bubble? I think one can always find meanings in literature which the author him/herself never intended, but I wondered whether you were aware that the conversations your characters have which centre around “saving the world” seem to genuinely echo the debates surrounding the artist and his or her obligation to represent the truth within their art? Of course it must have been problematic to write at times from the perspective of a sixteen year old Nigerian girl, but do you feel that your own background in any way hinders the reflection of the refugee’s experience? Or do you think that specifically because you are so distant to Little Bee in terms of age, culture, gender, experience etc that you are able to in some ways universalise the issues addressed, and in turn allow the book to be about humanity and love as opposed to any objective “truth” about immigration?
I must end in saying it is a truly beautiful piece of writing, which I think contains so much more than even you could have intended.
Best wishes,
Sophie Gackowski (University of Dundee)
Hi Sophie, thank you for studying my book & for your kind words. To your questions: first, I don’t tend to think of my characters as representing groups. Instead I look at how useful they’re going to be in allowing me to explore a particular moral question. In the case of that novel, the question is “How much of our comfortable lives should we give up in order to help those whose lives are much harder?” It’s the eternal question about charity, I suppose. Sarah is an interesting individual because, being involved in the event from which Little Bee is fleeing, she isn’t a simple giver of charity. Little Bee is interesting because, being resourceful & having something to contribute to Sarah in return, she isn’t a simple recipient of charity. By using characters with one foot outside their nominal social group, I can explore a moral question in a more interesting way & come at it from unexpected angles. To your second question about authorial intent and social obligation, I must admit I can no longer separate what I originally intended from how I now interpret the book. It’s become blurred in my memory. When I start to write, I have a theme that I’m curious to explore, plus a moral question I’d like to frame in a way that hold my interest, and hopefully the reader’s. I’m sure that some of my effects are intentional and some are unintended or arise from the reader’s interpretation. I do have a belief that as an artist I can represent something – probably not “truth”, but maybe a kind of energetic way of looking at the way we live – that ought to be socially useful. To your last question about my own background versus my characters’ profiles: as I’ve mentioned earlier, I don’t really see my characters as being representative of groups. I think they are tentatively anchored in real histories, but only tentatively. I tend to see them as abstracted artistic entities that I can use to produce real feelings in the reader. It’s those feelings that are “true”, not the characters that give rise to them, and certainly not the writer’s identification with those characters. As a writer, therefore, I research my stories very thoroughly but I don’t worry about the overlap – or lack thereof – between my experience and the imagined experience of my protagonists. In my new novel, for example, I’m working with four separate narrators with very different backgrounds, and it is often in the interface between those narrators that the strongest feelings arise. I think my ultimate goal is to write my own self out of the picture entirely.
Thank you for the reply Chris: having your own words and not merely assumptions and abstract interpretations will help enormously in my study of the text. I think that your ultimate goal, to write yourself out of the picture entirely, is surely the best means by which to explore questions of ethics; it must allow your writing to go forth in directions you perhaps never envisioned when beginning any given novel. I must finally add that, for me anyway, your writing is indeed socially useful and most certainly provides a means of looking at, although it may sound simplistic, the contemporary human condition in a truly beautiful way. Good luck with your future writing and thank you again.
All the best,
Sophie
Chris,
I just finished “Little Bee” and I thank you. We often take for granted the blessings of being born in a safe country to parents who will not be yanked away from us. I hope you write a joyful, grateful book next for your own sake and mine. I much enjoyed your presence and talk at the recent Literary Sojourn in Steamboat. Thank you for joining hearts with us.
Deb
Cheyenne, WY
Trying to carry the plot lines through . . . Little Bee is, minimally, off to prison and let’s hope that Sarah has a cell phone, makes a call to the embassy, and was smart enough to photocopy her husband’s research and leave it with another journalist (in case anything happened to her) and email her collected stories in progress to this same source, so she and her son have a chance of survival and of freeing Little Bee.
Let’s also hope against all hope that Andrew is out of the picture.
Realism is great, but this ending needed “just” a little more. To some extent, it’s a cope out leaving a readership hanging, left to fill in so much themselves when there haven’t been enough clues to solve the puzzle entirely. It’s a like a carpenter who doesn’t complete a job, leaving you to finish something that he could have done, assuming you could, even without his tools [enough information].
Lovely, lovely writing throughout the novel. Wish the ending wasn’t so undone, ambiguous, up for interpretation with very distinct and different possibilities. Again–if Sarah protected the information she was collected, it’s a very different ending for them all (and, as a journalist once burned, it would be CRAZY of her not to have). If she didn’t, she and LB are fried.
Thank you Deb – I very much enjoyed Steamboat Springs – one of the best literary festivals in the world.
Thanks Betsy. I like the image of me as a workshy carpenter, wandering off the job before it was finished. I hope it wasn’t something important…
Hi Chris. What a great book! Funnily enough I came across it almost by accident while on holiday at a chess tournament in the Cap d’Agde in France. Having suddenly realised I had forgotten to bring some reading material with me I nipped down to the local media shop and found they had a small English section. Most of the books available consisted of spy thrillers or “chick-lit” (sadly not my genre). In amongst the lot, though was “The Other Hand” and its rather intriguing back sleeve summary. (Congrats to your editor on that one – it hooked me!) So I left the shop with your book and the latest Ben Elton. I read Elton first and found it a bit superficial but entertaining, and then proceeded to “The Other Hand.” What can I say but that if I were to write a book (one day I hope to) I’d want to write one like this! It really captured the way we feel about the plight of asylum-seekers. Even the most tolerant amongst us just feel powerless to help them. I guess we’re all standing on the edge of a grave watching a small child screaming for his dead daddy. (I feel that this scene symbolises it all) It’s painful to know such horrors exist and we freeze before our own impotence to act. I’m left asking myself if I would cut off a finger to save a life. The truth? I haven’t a clue. There was so much to the character of Little Bee, more than her status as an asylum seeker, such wisdom and understanding of the world. As an optimist, I choose a happy ending, the one I want for all asylum-seekers. So thanks for the great read. I’ll be ordering a copy of Incendiary soon. On a final note, I found it a weird coincidence that both books I bought that day had references to U2 in them. It’s a small world, pity we can’t share it out a bit better.
Dear Chris,
I’ve just finished The Other Hand. Great work. Very gripping, thrillerishly surprising, moving, informative, challenging. I really hope it will make a difference to the way some people who know Richmond Park imagine people who don’t (and some who do)!
I volunteer with refugees locally (www.hafan.org), also help some of them get their writing published (www.lulu.com/hafan). At present I’m trying to convert this activist activity into research to generate income for the university where I work (www.modernlanguagesatswansea.wordpress.com). Your novel will make a great case study to investigate how representations of refugees travel across cultural borders. It’s a very, very British book, but clearly it is travelling successfully. I see it’s out in French, coming out in German – any other translations? (As well as the translation into American – I’ve even ordered that Little Bee to check what changed beyond the title.) What’s your experience working with translators and foreign editors? Not least: how is it going down in Nigeria, elsewhere in Africa?
Best of luck with the next
Tom
Hi Tom, thank you, & my respect to you for your volunteer work. In answer to your question, I’m lucky to have some excellent foreign editors. I don’t think I’ve had a bad experience with them so far. The publishing industry is very volatile, so from time-to-time one of the publishers will go out of business suddenly, which can be a problem. But in terms of their engagement and enthusiasm for publishing foreign novels, I’ve generally been very impressed. As you say, my stories are really about London & I don’t set out to write them for an international audience. I think there are plenty of readers around the world who are interested in perspectives from elsewhere, so I just write in the way that comes naturally to me & hope that people will find it interesting. In answer to your second question, as far as I know the only place on the African continent where my books are sold in any number is South Africa. I don’t have much feedback from Nigeria (or from West Africa in general), although I do have a lot of feedback from Nigerian diaspora readers in UK, US and Canada. I have a full spectrum of feedback from readers in that community, ranging from very appreciative to very angry – which is the same range of responses I get from most reading communities, I guess.
Thank you Shona.
Hi Chris
Have stayed up past midnight to finish the second half of ‘the other hand’ in one go. Just wanted to say thanks for such a powerful and gripping novel. You got the voices spot on – every character memorable, every scene gripping – and maybe the end is just right too, because this refugee problem goes on and on, year in year out, some endings better, some worse and no way of knowing which. I think our private powerlessness comes over pretty strongly too – how come the government simply refuses to find the will to stop this abuse of asylum seekers? So, a many layered story and much to ponder. Thanks again.
Dear, Chris?
I loved “Little Bee”, I finished it on the plane. I was wondering, is there a reason on why you used hanging in your novel twice? Once with Andrew and again with the girl at the detention center? What was the connection for the hanging? Did you use it as a metaphor? Also I wanted to know when you used the phrase “A dog must be a dog and a wolf must be a wolf” what were you referring too? Overall, it was an amazing novel. I recommended, “Little Bee” to so many of my friends. I hope we can see a movie as well!
Thank you,
Eric
Hi,
One member of our book group noted that, the last word in the novel – “drowned” – and Little Bee always thinking of how she would kill herself if the men came – seem to indicate that she committed suicide. Did she?
We were all moved by your work and did talk about what each of us could do to alleviate even a particle of the heartache and suffering we see.
Elfie
Chris–A truly profound read. And many thanks for a website with so much to offer the curious reader. Many questions abound, however I’ll refrain from all but this one: So… if Little Bee is deported home to her native country, why is there a military police unit stationed to watch her (and Sarah’s) movement for over two weeks and ultimately chase her down? This, I don’t understand. Thank you for an illuminating story. -karen
Hello Chris, our book club will be discussing your wonderful book “Little Bee”, this evening, so far the word on the street is everyone enjoyed it. I felt it was a very powerful story, it really opens ones eyes to the many tragic things that go on in this world. I look forward to the movie. I also see by your blog that you are a cyclist. Our book club is actually a “Biker Book Club”. We are all cyclists that love to read as well. Thanks again for creating such a great read. Happy writing and pedaling!-Kim
A haunting read – certainly not one to be forgotten. It will take awhile for the lessons of this novel to sink in and the cold, tight cord around my heart to ease a bit. Do not believe that it will ever quite thaw! The world is harsh and the realities of that harshness stand out even in the various yellow sunshine washes evoked during the telling of this novel. Believe that I like “The Other Hand” title best- “Little Bee” teases one into believing that their might be a warm outcome….”God’s in his heaven and all’s right in the world”. “Of Mice and Men” “East of Eden” – “Little Bee” – all thought provoking and destined to remain classics. Now off to find a copy of “Incendiary”. Sandi
What happened to the couple who took in the 4 refugees immediately after they left the detention camp? I kept thinking they risked themselves to help these women and when one committed suicide the farmer and his wife would probably be arrested for helping them. It seemed that no good deed goes unpunished. Yet, there was no consequence to Sarah, (who is morally flawed), for helping Little Bee. She was even permitted to leave the county with her.
I would like to hear what Nigerian refugees have to say. Lacking that can we have reactions from South Africa. I can imagine writing in a male voice and even in writting in the voices of historical figures in my culture. Diaries and other written material could inform my voice. However short of hearing what the refugees say in their own communities, I doubt that I would credit my projection into their space. Another thought for all you mothers out there. Would anyone of us have taken our child to the Beach?
Hello, Chris: I just finished “Little Bee”, which I read in one day…could not put it down. I do not remember crying so much while and after reading a book. Your characters are so real, none flawless…and Little Bee is definitely a poet…I am so in love with her…how could Sarah not adopt her? What a silly question…
It hurts my heart to know that all of what you discuss is so horrifyingly real. The laws, the indifference, the horror of what some people can perpetrate against other innocent people, the unspeakable tortures against women. And we sit in our confortable houses, ride our confortable cars, and are so blindly unaware of the suffering of others, nor do we want to be bothered. That is what breaks my heart. Chris, are there any organizations that you know of that help in any way? Is there anything I could do? Is there any way to really adopt some of these children, or help families? I would like to get involved.
Little Bee will always live in my heart.
Giovanna
Hi Chris
I loved your book. I learned things that will be with me until the end of my life.
Regards from Brazil!