Bali Rai's acclaimed novels (Un)arranged Marriage and Rani and Sukh explore the clashes between and within Asian families in Leicester.
His new novel The Last Taboo revisits the same territory but widens the scope to focus on racial tension between the Asian and black communities. Read as a triptych, the books begin to create a multifaceted picture of Leicester's British Asian community.
I wanted to reflect the background that I come from, which isn't a background that's reflected in publishing,' Rai explains. 'The Leicester that I'm writing about, 75% of it exists and 25% of it is the story that I put in. It's about building up a little collection of stories about the same people or groups of people living in the same place from different perspectives. I'm going to be doing at least two more.
'I wanted to reflect the background that I come from, which isn't a background that's reflected in publishing.'
In The Last Taboo Simran is attracted to Tyrone, but she is reluctant to go out with him because he is black, and she fears that a relationship between them would incur the wrath of her extended family. Simran's cousins and Tyrone play for opposing football teams, and racial tensions on the pitch soon erupt into violence.
The idea for the novel grew out of Rai's own experiences. 'I used to play football for a local side and I remember taking along one of my friends, who was black, and my cousins giving me a lot of grief.' An incident in a Leicester bar was the catalyst for him to start writing the book.
'The bar was managed by an Asian guy, and a black guy with dreads came in with his Asian girlfriend. And the Asian guy came up to me, and, because I was Asian too, started slagging them off. And I went mad at him. I said, The only reason you're saying that to me is that I'm Asian and you think I've got the same disgusting attitude as you.'
Given that racism against Britain's black and Asian communities is an ongoing problem, it took courage for Rai to address the issue of racial intolerance within the communities. He admits that he expects a certain amount of criticism for writing about a topic that some people believe should be kept from the public gaze.
'My friend, Jeff, who's black, said I was stupid to write the book because I would get lots of grief from Asian people. I said, "Well, I don't care". If anything I do upsets racists I'm very happy. The vast majority of racist attacks in this country and racial abuse are directed towards non-white people.
But at the same time you can't hide from the fact that there's racism within the black community and the Asian community. The riot in Birmingham last year between Asian and black youths, that was all over a racial issue. So whether I'm brave or stupid I don't know; it's just something I wanted to write about.
As a male writer who creates credible female characters, Rai is something of a rarity. His first attempt at a female narratorial voice was in Rani and Sukh; it was a notable success.
'I spend my time walking around looking at the world from the point of view of the character that I'm writing about, or trying to. I was really worried about it,' he admits. 'It took me a couple of months to get Rani's voice, but then it never went away. Simran is slightly different to Rani in that she's a lot more confident. I spend my time walking around looking at the world from the point of view of the character that I'm writing about, or trying to. So with Simran I spent a lot of time looking at Leicester and what was going on through her eyes, and I did the same with Rani.'
Like Rani and Sukh, the new novel moves between time periods and narratorial voices. Simran and her brother David narrate The Last Taboo in first person; their cousins' perspectives are periodically interspersed in third person. Rai enjoys writing from multiple viewpoints.
One of the things I always do when I go into schools in order to try and get young people to see books in a different way, is that I link the writing of books to the writing of TV shows or films. The multi-angle aspect of those is something I enjoy.
My favourite books are always those where you have multiple angles, and that's what I'm trying to do. James Ellroy is one of my favourite authors. If you read any of his books, halfway through you've forgotten how many characters' viewpoints you're looking at the book from. I enjoy that.'
Conflict between teenagers and parents is practically de rigeur in realist teenage novels, but Rai chose to depart from convention by portraying Simran's parents as sympathetic characters.
'I didn't want her immediate family to be part of the problem. There is this thing with extended families in British Asian society, where an unkind word from an uncle in your father's ear can stop somebody from going out with somebody. It's family honour. And it's not just in the Asian community. If you go to the Turkish community, the Greek community - any community where families are big has that.
I wanted to make Simran's parents people that she could talk to. I wanted her dad to be very silly, like an Asian Homer Simpson. I wanted him to act as a counterpoint to the extended family. The pressure doesn't come from within the nuclear family unit, it comes from outside of that. But that's still part of the family and that still influences your life and sometimes changes your decisions. That's part of the British Asian experience.'
In writing realistically about an aspect of the contemporary British Asian experience, Rai is actively trying to counter what he considers to be the media's limited portrayal of British Asian culture.
'I've always tried to write about parts of being British and Asian that you don't get if you watch Goodness Gracious Me or Bend it Like Beckham, because they're not real depictions of what British Asianness is about. British Asianness is depicted as a feelgood thing on television, and to be honest it winds me up.
There are so many different cultures and subcultures and differences of opinion religiously, culturally, about what it means to be British or Pakistani or Indian that somebody's got to start looking at that. Nobody's going to make a film with Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightly and talk about racism. I wanted to look at something that was a bit harder and more swept under the carpet.'
Books for teenagers which address such serious topics are often labelled 'issue novels, a term which usually has pejorative overtones. Rai believes that at the moment novels about children from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds inevitably fall into the 'issue novel' category.
It's an issue novel because it's an issue that exists in British society,' he says. 'If Jacqueline Wilson writes a story about a divorced white working-class mother and her children, something like The Illustrated Mum, that isn't an issue novel for most people, it's a Jacqueline Wilson novel.
If Malorie Blackman writes something about race or I write something about cultural diversity in the UK, it's called an issue novel. Without issue novels there would be no writing about black and Asian people in this country. So we need them.
We need a bit more that reflects the rest of Britain as well, because the vast majority of ethnic minority kids live in inner cities and you need to reflect that. A lot of white working- class kids don't get reflected either. People on the right wing use it as a term to smack you over the head. I happily write issue novels. If that's what you want to call them, I'm happy to write them.'
