← The Book Case
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:36]
B
Yes, folks, it's time again for the bookcase. I'm Charlie Gibson, the bookcase with Kate and Charlie. Kate likes to call you all book nerds. I think that is highly unfair. I like bibliophiles far more dignified.
- [00:49]
C
Kate, I don't know. I mean, you're talking to somebody who liked silly costumes who is currently wearing a scarf indoors. Dignity has never really been that big of a thing for me. If there was a stupid hat, I put it on. If there were dumb shoes, I tried them on. And now because I'm in Minnesota and below zero weather, I just wear a scarf all the time, every day, like underwear. So dignity's never really been that huge in my book. If I had been alive at the time of Downton Abbey, I would have been thoroughly, I don't know, banished.
- [01:20]
B
You wouldn't have been let in the house. No, no, probably not. You are the only adult that I know that has multiple pairs of dealy boppers.
- [01:28]
C
I do, I do. I absolutely do. I have headbands with weird things on them.
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B
You do.
- [01:32]
C
And that's kind of my. You know, again, I don't rate dignity very high on my list of priorities.
- [01:38]
B
We have a wonderful, wonderful book for you today and I want to get in Kate, to why we read it. I am pretty conversant with almost all good series of mysteries and this is a book called the Burning Ground. It is written by a fellow named Abir Mukherjee. M U K H E R J E E Mukherjee, an Indian name and as you'll learn when you hear him talk with a Scottish accent now, like you do, we'll explain like you do. But it is a series of novels of two detectives. Windham and Banerjee are the a British detective and an Indian detective and they pair up in the India of the Raj. He started writing from the period after World War I up to Indian Independence of 1948. There have been six books in the series so far. He's only about up to the end of the 1920s. He's got a ways to go and they're wonderful mysteries, but so too are they extraordinarily well written.
- [02:38]
C
Yeah, it's really interesting. Rarely do you fall in love with a series in the sixth book in. We were sent the sixth book in the Burning Grounds. It had this intriguing yellow cover and I thought to myself, the sixth in the series, well, we've already missed that boat, if it's any good. And then we started reading it and the writing is terrific and it's funny and the dialogue is wonderful. And his world building of imperialist Calcutta around the turn of the century is amazing. Now why haven't we heard of him? Well, I get the sense that he is big internationally. There's a French series he's read in India, he's read in the uk. But you know, I read an interview with Abeer once who said, well, I don't think Americans love to read authors whose names they can't spell. And I, I think that's. I don't know why that is, but I, I have to confess, his, his mysteries were revelation to me and I loved the sixth book so much that I've now gone back and I'm almost finished with book one and I plan on reading two, three, four and five. I am now a devoted Abir Mukherjee, Wyndham and Banerjee reader and I love moments like that when I stumble upon something new that I really love. Listen, if a lot of you have written into Apple websites and said that you have read Richard Osmond, because we are such huge fans of Richard Osmond, first of all, we shouldn't hold that much power. You shouldn't listen to us that closely. Number two, if you loved Richard Osman because of our recommendation, you will love Albert Mukherjee. I fell in love with his series the same way I fell in love with the Thursday Murder Club. Just terrific characters, good writing and mysteries that keep you guessing.
- [04:14]
B
Well, I honestly don't. I was the first one to read it and I called Katie up and I said, this is something. And I don't know what caused me to read it. As Katie said, it has a sort of an intriguing cover. And anyway, I read the first few pages and I thought this was terrific. And let me give you an example of how well written these books are. At the beginning of chapter two, he just has a couple of paragraphs about Calcutta which I thought really brought the city to life. And we asked him to read those.
- [04:38]
D
Calcutta. It was impossible to love it unless you were a sadist of some sort of impossible, that is, right up until the moment you realized you could no longer live anywhere else. And then you loved it and hated it in equal measure. Calcutta was like the splinter that pierced your flesh, an exquisite pain that dulled and ossified till you stopped noticing a foreign body that became part of you, assimilating you as you assimilated it, yet always there, always, always ready to hurt you when you press too hard. Calcutta was a fever dream, a melange of the infernal and the angelic, its gullies and paras brimming over with poverty and hunger and fear and brutality. And yet there was that other side, too, oft caught only fleetingly, like glimpses from a speeding train, when the city showed you a different face, its humanity and its gentility. And then it was beautiful.
- [05:39]
B
Anyway, we like to talk about this podcast as two generations, two points of view, two genders. And this is two points of view. The British colonialist Sam Wyndham and Banerjee, who is the Indian interested in self determination. And they work together on a couple of crimes in this book, the Burning Ground.
- [06:03]
C
Yeah, and a few weeks ago we talked to Megha Mujamdar, who talked about moral relativism and how prevalent it is in India. And, man, it was never more prevalent than an imperialist Calcutta around the turn of the century. These guys both work for the police force. Both of them struggle with imperialist rule and yet serve it to the best of their abilities, often going above and beyond. These are just terrific books. Again, we read the Burning Grounds. How often do you fall in love with the six in the series? But here we are. We've fallen in love with the six in the series, and I can't wait to read.
- [06:35]
B
You won't waste your time if you read this series. Really, really good historical crime fiction books. Here's our talk with Avir Mukherjee.
- [06:46]
E
Avir Mukherjee, it is such a pleasure.
- [06:48]
C
To have you in the bookcase.
- [06:50]
E
I want to start with a question you've been asked time and time again, but I think it's an important establishing question. You set the Wyndham Banerjee series in imperialist Calcutta at the beginning of the 20th century.
- [07:02]
C
Why then and why Calcutta?
- [07:04]
D
Well, firstly, it's a pleasure to be on and it's lovely to meet you, Kate, and you, Charlie. Thank you so much. Why Calcutta and why then? Well, to be honest with you, it started off as a search for my own identity. As you can tell, I'm from Scotland. My father looked at a map and said, what's the coldest, wettest place I can raise a family? And he moved from Calcutta all the way to Glasgow. I mean, that's a special type of, you know, ridiculousness. I Don't know why a man would do that, but he did. And, you know, so I grew up in the west of Scotland, and I don't know if you know much about Glasgow and its environments. The most important question you get asked as a kid is, are you a Catholic or a Protestant? And I would have to say, I'm a Hindu. And I would be asked, aye, but yeah, a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu.
- [08:02]
And these were the questions I grew up with. So it was all about identity. Who was I? What was I? Was I Scottish, Was I Indian, was I Bengali, Was I British, or was I somewhere in between? And so when I came to write, I really wanted to sort of figure out my identity because we didn't learn about colonial history at school. We learned more about German history in the 1920s and 30s than we did about British history. And there's a very good reason for that. Like you guys, we're very good at managing our own history, right? We sort of brush over a lot of it. We think we're brilliant because we don't tell the truth. And so I wanted to get to that truth. I wanted to look at the truth of the time, of the British in India. The problem is our history books don't tell the truth. And funnily enough, neither do the Indian history books. Indian history books romanticize it in a different fashion. If you read an Indian history book, you would think that all British people were evil and Machiavellian and it was all a plot to take over this innocent nation of India. And if you know anything about British people, you'll know that British people can't organize their way out of a paper bag, let alone sort of, you know, take over a subcontinent. Everything happens by chance and by luck. And the truth is always great. It's always somewhere in the middle. And that's where I sit. I sit in the middle of these two great cultures of India and Britain. And so I really wanted to look at that history because I wanted to answer another question. I wanted to answer, you know, it's that period in history was the world's first nonviolent freedom struggle, right? Think about it. That's madness, right? In a world of Nazism, of Stalinism, where any dissent is met by a gulag or a gas chamber or a bullet to the head, the Indians and the British played out the world's first non violent freedom struggle. Now that's mad, right? To do that at any time is mad, but to do it then says something amazing. And that's what led to, you Know, that was the spark for Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the States. It was the catalyst. It was the, you know, the template for Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa. But it started between these two ridiculous people, the British and the Indians, and it started in India. And so I wanted to really look at that fascinating time, and I wanted to look at that. And I thought, what better way than to look at, you know, big, big issues than through novels where people get murdered.
- [10:43]
B
You came to writing not in an old age, but you were approaching middle age. You started to write. You didn't know if anybody would read it, but you started with this idea of putting a Britisher and an Indian who believes in self determination, putting them together. And I wonder if you see them sort of as representative of the two cultures as you wrote. And what gave you the temerity to think that that would work?
- [11:11]
D
Those are brilliant questions. Charlie, what can I say and thank you for glossing over my age there, you know, you should have just gone with it. Yes, I came to writing late. I'm an old man now. Why a British or an Indian? Firstly, they do represent the two communities because I think too often history is written in the broad brush and we miss the detail. And the detail is in the personal relationships. And if you're to read George Orwell, say, you know, his books Burmese Days or his paper Shooting an Elephant, you realize that the relationship between governed and governing, between the colonizer and the colonized on the individual level is quite different or can be quite different from received history. So I wanted to do that. But at the same time, these two men are the two sides of my own personality. So Sam is my British half. He's my older half. Charlie, my more wizened half. He's my more cynical side. Whereas Surin is my Indian side. He's my younger side. He's my more optimistic side. He has my terribly skinny Indian legs as well, unfortunately. Just another cross that we both bear, he and I. Yeah. So really, these two guys are, you know, part of my personality. And they are often they're in conflict. You know, when you sit between cultures, you are an outsider. You're an outsider to both. You notice the peculiarities of things in each society. You notice the hypocrisies on both sides. But sometimes when these two are in harmony, when they sing together, it's beautiful. And I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change Sam and Soren. I wouldn't change the two sides of my personality. Thought I would change the thickness of my calves. I would do that.
- [13:00]
B
Charlie.
- [13:03]
Bear. When you read the New York Times bestseller list, you know, it's the fourth in a series or the eighth in a series, or occasionally it's the 25th in a series. So when you wrote the first Wyndham, Banerjee, the Rising man, did you suspect that this could possibly develop into a series?
- [13:20]
C
And do you have to write towards that?
- [13:22]
E
Is there a different writing technique to a series than a standalone, which I.
- [13:25]
C
Know you've also done?
- [13:26]
B
Is it a blessing or a curse, in effect? Yeah.
- [13:29]
D
Well, I mean, to take the first question, did I know that I was gonna write a series? Yes, very early on. I mean, I said when I first submitted, I won a competition. I didn't. I'm too lazy to actually write a book off my own steam. I wrote 10,000 words, submitted 5,000 to a competition, told them I had a whole book, right? But I didn't. I had these 10,000 words and I got a book deal off that. And, you know, and they said, congratulations, we're gonna publish your novel. Except I didn't have a novel. I had another 5,000 rotten words in a drawer. But putting that to one side, I did at that point, you know, when I submitted my entry, I wrote a two page synopsis. And at the end of it, I did say, you know, if this is of interest, this would be the first in a series.
- [14:11]
B
Wow.
- [14:12]
D
And I thought I would do this series from 1919, the end of the first World War, all the way to Indian independence in 1947. And this is how naive I was, Kate and Charlie. I thought, oh, I can do a book a year, be no problem whatsoever. Right? Not realizing that that's, you know, essentially what, 31 years. And I should also tell your audience, you know, I'm from Glasgow, right. We have the lowest life expectancy in Europe. Okay. And as Charlie's already told you all, I'm very old already.
- [14:42]
B
Thank you.
- [14:43]
D
I could go. I could go at any minute. That's. That's the problem here. Right. So I'll keep going, but I'm not sure I'm going to reach independence in 47.
- [14:53]
B
I'm delighted, though, to hear that, that there's a ways to go. This book, Burning Ground, I suspect it's indeterminate, but I suspect you're in the late 20s, early 30s at this point. You've got about 15, 16 years to go with these characters.
- [15:07]
D
Do you know what, for one lovely moment that I thought you were talking about me when you said late 20s, but you're talking about the late 1920s. You're absolutely right. I think this is 1926 we're in now if I do my maths. So yes, there's a long way to go. To answer your question, Kate, do I have an overarching idea of what's going to happen? Sort of. But mainly no. As I said, I'm lazy. I sort of bumble my way through things. But it's a very British way to approach things. You know, we're very much, you know, amateurs at most things and we're proud of being amateurs. Well, we'll see what happens. You know, as long as we've got a cup of tea and a keyboard, we'll see what happens where we go next.
- [15:48]
C
You wrote the first four novels entirely.
- [15:51]
E
From Sam's first person perspective.
- [15:52]
C
And in the fifth book you switched.
- [15:54]
E
To two perspectives in this book also has two first person perspectives in Banerjee and Wyndham.
- [16:00]
C
Why did you do that Split?
- [16:02]
E
What did it give you? And is this how you're gonna write.
- [16:04]
C
Them all going forward?
- [16:05]
D
Well, originally, you know, as I say, I'd never written anything before I came to this series. I blagged my way onto a competition and won somehow. And so I was a complete novice and, you know, I didn't feel confident enough to write in the third person. It felt, when I was starting off, it felt much more natural and easy to write in the first person. And the sad thing is I felt it easier to write authentically from the point of view of the white Englishman than I did the Indian, you know, the Indian Indian, shall we say, as opposed to the Scottish Indian. Right. Which I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But you know, either way, you blame my parents for it.
- [16:49]
C
So.
- [16:49]
D
So when I started off, I didn't feel confident to write authentically from anybody else's viewpoint but the white Englishman, probably because that's the side of history that we all know most about. After, you know, four books, I did feel more confident. I felt more confident in my. I mean, I've been learning, I'm still learning how to write, but I felt more confident about writing from the point of view of, of an Indian. So I wanted to write Surendranath's point of view also. I felt I needed to. Otherwise, you know, I was just giving a one sided story. And my objective from the very beginning was to provide a balance. Right. You know, if I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle, I have to give you both viewpoints. And so it felt right after four books to bring in Soren's voice because he is growing as a character himself. Both he and Sam are changing throughout the novel. The novels, they are growing. They are becoming different people in the same way that the relationship between the British and the Indians evolved over that period. And I think going forward, Kate, as you. As I've told you, I have no idea what's going to happen next. No strategy whatsoever. I would like to have both voices because I think it's important.
- [18:07]
C
What's your process?
- [18:07]
E
Do you know? I'm going to write Windham today. I'm going to write Banerjee today. Do you. Do you write everything from their perspective and then write everything from his perspective, or do you switch back and forth when you write?
- [18:18]
D
Kate, that's a great question. You've known me for 23 minutes now. What do you think my process is?
- [18:24]
E
Honest to God, I have no idea. I have no idea. Well, let us. Knowing what I know of you, you could have a dartboard in your office with, you know, Wyndham on one side and Banerjee on the other and just throw a dart.
- [18:34]
D
That would be more scientific, believe me. No, it's whatever feels. I mean, I've tried. I've tried to do different ways I've tried to do it. Let's write Wyndham's point of view. Let's write Banerjee's point of view. It doesn't work for me. It has. The story has to move in tandem because otherwise I'll forget what I've done and I will lose the thread. So whatever feels natural, whoever feels natural as the next step in that story. And I've made terrible mistakes in the past. In the end of the third book, Sam has a bit of an opium problem, which he gets rid of. And at the end of the third book, I say he's going off to a Buddhist monastery. And then when I wrote book four, I'd forgotten I'd done this. And I send him to a Hindu ashram. And it's only at the end, it's.
- [19:22]
C
Only an edit stage.
- [19:23]
D
And somebody points out that I've sent him to completely the wrong place. And you can't edit that. So I had to add a line, blaming the doctor who'd given him the wrong details. The doctor said it was a Buddhist monastery. This is a Hindu ashram. The guy doesn't know what he's doing. And unfortunately, that's sort of reflective of my planning.
- [19:47]
C
Fair enough.
- [19:48]
D
I shouldn't really tell you this, should I? You think I'm a complete amateur.
- [19:50]
C
Well.
- [19:51]
D
But anyway, it's the truth. I'm being honest with you, and I think it's better that way.
- [19:56]
Luck, flaw and the intervention of divine powers is how I decide, Kate.
- [20:02]
E
Casually the intervention of an editor going. You don't remember your own plot, do you?
- [20:06]
D
Do you know what the number of edits. I'm surprised none of my editors have shot themselves yet or jumped out of a window.
- [20:13]
It surprises me.
- [20:15]
B
You mentioned something interesting, that you were in Calcutta doing research. This is a wonderful genre, I think, of historical crime novels. And yet you have to be true to the time. So how much research do you do?
- [20:29]
D
Doing the research is very important to me. And I try and be there on the ground. But really I'm blessed because my parents are from that city. I understand the culture to a degree. I understand the language, I understand the humor. And if you have these advantages, it's much easier to describe a place and a time. But putting that to one side, Calcutta is a place that, you know, is endlessly fascinating. You know, most people in the west think of it only as. Only see the poverty. They remember Mother Teresa, or in this country, the Black Hole of Calcutta, which is just very bad. Sort of British propaganda mainly. But if I were to tell you that Calcutta has more theaters than New York and London put together, that would surprise you, right? If I was to tell you that, you know, every year the city becomes. In October, the city becomes the world's largest art installation, that would surprise you. It is a city with a tremendous heritage and a tremendous culture. Where, you know, most people are a wee bit like me. I only understand myself when I'm there. You know, I've never lived. I wasn't born there. I've spent a lot of time there. But parts of my personality only make sense there. People think I'm lazy. I'm not lazy. I'm just Bengali. We do things differently there. It's a city of people who pretend to work for a living, knock off early at 4:30 and go to their poetry club or their art club to write really bad poetry or do amateur dramatics. It's that sort of place. Everyone's a poet or an artist or a philosopher. And I love that about it. Didn't answer your question at all, did I, Charlie? Sorry about that. I think every editor I've had has taught me. I learned the basics of writing between the first and second drafts of my first novel, A Rising Man. Cause I'd never written anything before that. And I remember handing in the first Draft and thinking, yeah, I'm a writer now, how brilliant am I? And then four weeks later I get the manuscript back covered in red ink and a 10 page suicide note, no editorial note from my editor. And I just thought, I can't do this. But I broke it down and little by little you learn, you learn how to write. And I've learned from great people, I've learned from my editors, I've learned from other authors. So for my last book, which wasn't part of the series, Hunted, as I say, it took me three years to write. It's won, you know, in the uk it won the thriller of the Year at the British Book Awards, it won the Theakston's, but it took three years because it was rubbish the first two times I wrote it. And even the third time I wrote it, I didn't know if it was any good. So I sent a draft, not even a finished version, to Lee Childs, to James Patterson, to Mick herron, to Val McDermott. And I said, I don't know if this is any good, can you help me? And they all came back with advice. You know, Lee Child said, I think this could do with an epilogue. And in the end, we didn't put one in, but a lot of people in the reviews said, I wish we'd had an epilogue. Val McDermott, who's a dear friend, I call her Auntie Val. She was. Oh, I felt like I'd been mugged when I was reading her comments. Change this, do that. What do you mean by this? This is rubbish. But I did and. Sorry, this is a very Scottish thing. You know, Scottish people are direct. Right. So. But I did, I did as much as I could to take the advice of all these, you know, gurus, the best in the business, and it changed the book. And I won the awards this year and they didn't. That's doubly funny, isn't it? There you are. I owe it to them, though.
- [24:03]
B
Aber Mukherjee, it is a pleasure. It is so much fun to talk to you. And you are a wonderful polyglot, that you have the Indian background, the Bengali background, you've grown up in Scotland, you've researched the British approach to India in the colonial period. And I would add there's a bit of Irish in you. You've kissed the Blarney Stone and you have the gift of gab.
- [24:26]
D
I thought you were talking about the glass of whiskey that's sitting next to me there for a minute, but that's that too. It's been love. It's been lovely talking to you, Charlie and Kate. It's been an honour. I do hope your listeners get a chance to read my books because my kids need shoes right? They're not getting any smaller. So please do go out there and read my books. But thank you so much for having me on.
- [24:47]
C
Thank you.
- [24:47]
E
A beer.
- [24:48]
C
If you would stand by, we'll have some rapid fire questions for you.
- [24:59]
F
Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com Copilot.
- [25:29]
G
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- [25:57]
Hablas espanol spritz to Deutsch?
- [26:00]
H
If you used Babbel, you would Babbel's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at Babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply.
- [26:33]
B
Rapid fire questions for Abhir Mukherjee, Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle Christie any.
- [26:39]
D
Day of the week.
- [26:40]
B
Urquil Poirot or Ms. Marple Poirot.
- [26:44]
D
I cannot stand Marple's shoes. And she was also in favor of hanging. She wanted to kill everybody. Hanging and flogging was Marple.
- [26:53]
B
Sorry.
- [26:53]
D
Carry on.
- [26:54]
C
The secret violence of Ms. Marple.
- [26:56]
E
The closest thing you have ever read to a perfect crime novel.
- [27:00]
D
Oh, that's easy. There's a book called the Long Drop by a woman called Denise Mina M I N a a Glasgow author. She's amazing. Read that. And she has a great gift for helping you understand human Nature. It's amazing. I wish I'm not a patch on her. So, yeah, the long drop.
- [27:19]
B
When you've got a book going, do you write three days a week, five days a week? What's your routine?
- [27:24]
D
I aim to write five days a week. I write two and a half to three days a week, after which my ability to write goes downhill very quickly and I procrastinate. So, yeah, in my head, I'm writing five or six days a week. On paper, it's about two and a half.
- [27:41]
C
What is the biggest pitfall, do you think, of crime and mystery writers, that you have to avoid?
- [27:47]
D
I'm not going to answer that question because I probably have probably fallen into each of them many times. I'll tell you what frustrates me, right? Actually having to have a crime. I've got to the stage in my career where I'd rather write a book without a plot. Right. But you can't do that as a crime. I've suggested this several times to my editors and they look at me and scratch their head and go, no, you can't do that. You're not a good enough writer to write a book without a plot. But that's what I would. I would love to do that. But my frustration is my books have to have a plot. That's the problem with crime fiction.
- [28:19]
B
Well, that's. That's. And it leads to an interesting question. We asked Richard Osmond, what's more important? Is it character or plot? And he said, oh, character.
- [28:28]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think.
- [28:33]
Why do we come back to series? You know, I will pick up the next book in Richard Osmond's series. I'll pick up the next book in Ian Rankin series. Because I'm in love with the characters. It doesn't matter what the plot is, Right. I've fallen in love with these individuals. I want to know about their lives. And that's what we live for. The best novels, you know, really, we fall in love with individuals, good or bad. Right. We love Hannibal Lecter. Cause we're mad. But we love character, right. We're not that keen on cannibalism, right. Or serial killing. But we love character. So, yes, character, I would have to.
- [29:09]
C
Say, when you start all of your books, do you know who did it.
- [29:13]
D
Most of the time? Most of the time. I know the beginning and I know roughly where it's gonna finish. And then it's a bit like driving through the fog. I can see about a chapter and a half ahead. I know roughly where I'm going That's not always been the case. At least twice the ending has been different to what I thought it was going to be, but it's been in the same sort of ballpark. But maybe somebody else has done it. On one occasion I fell in love with a character and thought, you can't die. That would be terrible. So, yeah, and I hated myself for that, for changing it. But I think, yeah, most of the time I know what's going to happen at the end.
- [29:47]
B
Amir Mokuchi, many thanks.
- [29:54]
C
You know, it's interesting, we made a recommendation at the beginning of the show that if you like, our recommendation of Richard Osmond, which so many of you have written in and said, that you do that you'll like Aber Mukherjee. In some ways, this interview reminded me of Richard Osman. I was just as charmed by Abeer Mukherjee and his crazy Scottish accent, which when he opens his mouth and starts speaking, you're like, are you serious?
- [30:15]
B
Well, it is strange. It is strange to see somebody who's obviously Indian, who has a Scottish accent and knows Great Britain well. And the first answer is, four minutes. And I said to Katie after we finished talking to him, we can't cut that. There's no way we can cut that. It's just he takes off and he is as delightful a talker as he is a writer.
- [30:35]
C
Yeah, yeah, he does. And he does a brilliant job, I think, of capturing the. I don't know, the advantages, the disadvantages, the silliness and the seriousness of imperialist anything. I was watching Trevor Noah the other day and he was standing next to this Britisher who was giving this rant going, all these foreigners, they moved to this country and they try to take it over and then they don't learn our language and they move here and they just try to pretend like the whole country's theirs. And Trevor Noah goes. Sounds pretty British to me.
- [31:08]
So I think he does a brilliant job of capturing all of the aspects of imperialism that I had never thought about before. And he's right. We as Americans, and probably they as English, don't probably learn as much as we should about our imperialist. You know, this country is ours because we put a flag into it kind of philosophy that dominated a good portion of the first part of our world history.
- [31:31]
B
So his books start in 1919, right after the First World War. That's the first book of this series. And then it goes on. This one is set in the late 20s, early 30s, and he's got more to come that'll take him up through Indian independence. In 1948. We thank him ever so much. It was delight to talk to him. I always think of writers working in such a solitary profession that they're up in the garret of their some house and they're by themselves and they write, you know, day in and day out. Well, you wonder, are they going to be good talkers? They're all great talkers and he certainly exemplifies that.
- [32:06]
C
He talked like he had been shut up in a prison for like 20 years. You gotta love the wife of a man or a woman like that, you know.
- [32:14]
B
Well done and very.
- [32:16]
C
But how much fun. But how much fun to talk to him. Thank you so much, Abir Mukherjee. And like I say, I'm now a devoted fan.
- [32:22]
B
Kate will bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible. And then a coda from Alber Mukherjee.
- [32:28]
E
The book Case with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.
- [32:56]
D
I'll give you some advice that Walter Mosley gave me, right. Which is amazing. He said, you know, if you want to write, you should read. If you want to write well, you should read poetry. And I think that's a phenomenal piece of advice. I could never write poetry, but I think poets do an amazing job. With such limited acreage or real estate, they can purvey such powerful messages.
- [33:24]
I
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B
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I
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B
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J
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