First Writes: Monika Radojevic
In this Q&A, we throw some questions about ‘firsts’ at debut novelists. This month we feature Monika Radojevic, author of Strangerland, a 1990-set tale featuring the chance encounter between a European man and a South American woman both fleeing their homelands to find hope in an unexpected place
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What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? The Clarice Bean series by Lauren Child. They were so funny and creative. I was obsessed.
What was the book you read that made you decide to be a writer? I’ve wanted to write books from the moment I learned to read. It wasn’t so much a book that caused that, but their ability to transport me to an entirely new world with new rules, often where children had more freedom than they do in reality. Harry Potter, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, The Princess Diaries, His Dark Materials, Artemis Fowl: these series shaped my understanding of the power of fiction and imagination.
What’s your favourite first line in a book? ‘When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation’: Swimming Home by Deborah Levy.
Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you? Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things blew my mind. I’d never seen anyone write with the kind of fearless experimentation that she does. It made me realise how limitless literature can be.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day? Journal for half an hour, read for half an hour, turn off my phone.
What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? Either watch something wildly entertaining with a giant plate of food or go do something/see someone. Writing is weird in that it requires a level of self-obsession, so to avoid becoming a very boring person I try to leave my house and my own brain as often as I can.
In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? Jordan Peterson’s crap.
What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist? Read more and read wider, including genres you’d normally ignore.
Strangerland is published by #Merky Books on Thursday 5 March; picture: Barnaby Boulton.