ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What happens when you find out the story you've been told about your own life isn't true?
In this episode, Bob Wells talks to award-winning novelist and poet Nathalie Abi-Ezzi about her new historical novel, All the Lives She Lived. It opens in Birmingham in 1917, where a young woman named Doris grows up believing she is alone in the world. Then she learns her parents and six siblings are alive and living just streets away. Her search for who she really is takes her from Birmingham to Baghdad and Beirut.
Nathalie talks about:
- Growing up in Lebanon during the civil war and arriving in England at ten
- How her flamboyant, difficult grandmother inspired the character of Doris
- Researching everyday life in places with few first-hand records
- Writing characters who aren't always likable, but who readers can understand
- Why she doesn't plot her novels in advance
- Teaching creative writing, and a simple five-minute exercise for anyone who wants to start
The conversation is spoiler-light, so it's safe for anyone who hasn't read the book yet.
Links:
All the Lives She Lived by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
Creative writing courses in Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, Kent
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