an interview with Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura's second book, Gone to the Forest, is an elegant and sparse tale of familial fallout to a backdrop of civil war and post-colonial guilt. Set in an unnamed country that could be anywhere on the continents of Africa, South America or Asia, the book deals with white settler Tom, his father, his spouse and the farm that is all he knows.

Katie took some time to talk to us about how she edited the book, her feelings on post-colonialism and what she's most looking forward to reading this year.

Hello Katie, how are you and what did you have for breakfast this morning?

Toast and marmalade. And tea.

Everyone's talking about Gone to the Forest. Expectation is high. Are you excited for it to be finally out in the UK?

I am! I just received my finished copies and it's a lovely object to look at and hold, which I think is still important for books.

I wanted the structure of the book to mimic the experience of the central character...The beauty of the book is that it takes major events in a country and puts them in the background of some very simple lives falling apart. Was this an intentional misdirection? To have a slow build-up to quite a massive national event?

I wanted the structure of the book to mimic the experience of the central character, Tom. He's a character comprised of delusion and partial innocence; the first half of the book chronicles the nature of that delusion, and the second half relates the way it is stripped away.

The book takes place out of time, not quite being specific about the whens and the wheres. Did you have an idea of where and when this was set and how did you go about ensuring that these get stripped out of the final book?

The book's setting is a composite of multiple places and historical periods. It's not set in any one place, but it's not a wholly invented place either. It was important to me to have recognizable details throughout, that would evoke existing narratives, histories and notions of location. There are deliberate inconsistencies, places where the backdrop or the narrative doesn't cohere - that's part of the project, the evocation of whole and partial stories.

There is a major narrative involving colonialism and post-colonialism. Do you feel that we are living in a time that deals with the fallout of colonialism and the British Empire?

I was interested in writing about the fragmentation of history and historical narratives, something that I think has been accelerated in our culture. In that sense, the book is written in response to something in the climate today, and has more to do with our relationship to historical narrative than with colonialism per se. Having said that, I knew that I wanted to write about power and oppression, and colonialism remains one of our most potent narratives on this subject.

I was interested in writing about the fragmentation of history and historical narratives...How much is Tom affected by outside pressures and the changing political climate and how much by his insular nature and sheltered existence?

I think of Tom as an almost entirely passive character. He's the product of outside forces, he is shaped by the will of others. So that he can't even claim his weaknesses as his own. He is one of the last characters in the book to perceive the political changes taking place around him, but at the same time he is shaped by those changes. The blindness and irony of that position, which you could think of as a historical and symbolic one, is Tom's chief characteristic.

The relationship between father and son, and son and betrothed… how did you go about framing these in such concise and beautifully fractured prose? We never find out too much about these characters but the clues all exist in the text.

To be a bit literal: I got rid of a lot. The original manuscript was about 30-40,000 words longer than the final text. Going through it, I tried to make sure I didn't say anything too directly - despite the ruthlessness of its members, this is not the kind of family where anything is said directly.

What is the book you're most looking forward to this year?

I'm looking forward to is the new translation of Krasznahorkai's Seiobo There Below and Marias' The Infatuations. 

Do your best to make it count. You're only going to write a certain number of books.What are you working on next?

I'm working on what I'm calling a pre-apocalypse novel, which will feature natural and manmade disasters, and chronicle the dissolution of a very bad marriage.

What is the one thing you've learnt writing this second novel that you wish you could share with the Katie who first set out to write fiction?

Do your best to make it count. You're only going to write a certain number of books.