When it comes to writing fiction from conflict zones, she is arguably one of the best. Amanitta Forna, the award-winning author of novels like The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, Ancestor Stones, The Devil that Danced on the Water … is one of the most promising writers from Africa having won global recognition for her works. Before diving into the world of fiction, she had made a number of notable documentaries on African art and culture as a journalist for BBC Television. Her books have been translated into 16 languages.
The author delivered an inspiring talk at Georgetown University-Qatar last week. Looking resplendent in an elegant robe, Forna held the audience of students, academia and visitors captive describing the challenges of writing fiction from war zones. Soon after her lecture, the author had a long line of admirers queued up clutching the copies of The Hired Man, waiting to get their books signed.
Born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Britain, and having lived in Iran, Thailand and Zambia, Forna talked about her novel The Hired Man, set in Croatia, unlike her first two books of fiction that are set in Sierra Leone. “Well, that seemed like enough (laughs). I have written three books set in Sierra Leone and not going to carry on setting books there for the rest of my life,” the writer explains in a chat with Community after her lecture.
“At least I require some variety and I think my readers require some variety too. I think I am finished with the setting of Sierra Leone. I am still interested in the theme of civil war and conflict though,” Forna goes on to elaborate.
And it was the civil war that happened to be at the same time as in Sierra Leone that drew her to Croatia. There were not just differences and similarities that were “worthwhile exploring”, there was a different angle to look at the conflict from the point of view of “neighbours turning on neighbours” and how that enacted.
The Hired Man tells the story of an English family that buys a holiday home in a Croatian village. It is a tale of war, betrayal and secrets that linger. It was picked as one of the best books of 2013 by NPR, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Independent, The Evening Standard, The Australian and the NZ Listener. It was a Barnes & Noble 2013 Critics Choice and nominated for the 2014 IMPAC Award.
Duro, her protagonist, is a villager in Croatia — a handy man who used to work on the boats and meets Laura, a British woman who has bought a house in Croatia as a holiday home.
“The book is all written from Duro’s point of view but one sees and hears a lot about what Laura does and does not understand about the village,” Forna narrates.
“So the two perspectives I am exploring are about somebody with a great knowledge of what has happened in the village, which is now below the surface, and somebody who comes into the situation and has none of that knowledge,” she adds.
And in Laura’s case, it is somebody who perhaps does not want the knowledge, and wants the life the way she thinks it is and the way she is taught it is as opposed to what it really is. The book is about the relationship between the two characters, how much one manipulates the other, and how much is she willing to be manipulated.
Forna’s favourite character in the book though is Laura’s daughter Grace. “She is very different from her mother, does not know much about the world either, she is genuinely naïve. But she has an inquiring mind and she wishes to understand,” says the writer.
The award-winning author says she does an extensive research for her writings. For instance, she went to the extent of spending weeks in an operation theatre and then observing in a mental asylum in Sierra Leone for one of her books whose main characters were a doctor and a psychologist.
“I do what my characters do. Not just that it lets me get to know the character but it usually gives me the ideas for the plot as well,” says Forna, explaining how she develops the characters and plots of her novels.
In Duro’s case in The Hired Man, for instance, she learnt to shoot a high-velocity rifle. It told her a lot about Duro, she says. It told her about his relationship with the land and the animals and it told her about “what character you have to be a very good shot.”
Forna says she always wanted to be a writer. She started career with law, and was “not happy as a lawyer”, moved on to become a journalist for BBC before finally stepping into the world of writing.
“From my late teens, I remember telling my school career adviser that I wanted to be a writer. And her response was, ‘I have never come across such arrogance in my life,’ she thought it was the most outrageous thing for a 17-year-old girl to say I want to be a writer,” recalls Forna.
She is a slow writer, she says. “I am not the kind of person who would write a book a year. That would never be me. It takes me two to three years,” says the writer. And it has been three years since her last book and now she is ready with her new book, coming out shortly.
Her favourite genre is novels, though she loves writing essays, says Forna. Her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Observer and Vogue. She has written stories for BBC radio and her TV credits include The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu for BBC TV 2009.
Forna is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for a number of literary awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker.
She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. In 2011 and 2013, she held the post of Sterling Brown Visiting Professor at Williams College Massachusetts.
In 2003, Forna also established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone. The charity now runs a number of projects in the spheres of education, sanitation and maternal health.
In 2014, Forna was named as a winner of the Donald Windham-Sandy M Campbell Literature Prize awarded annually by Yale University. She has been named a finalist for the 2016 Neustadt Award. Both prizes are awarded for an author’s body of work.
Before diving into the world of fiction, Aminatta Forna had made a number of notable documentaries on African art and culture as a journalist for BBC Television
