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| William Sutcliffe: 'It was so much more brutal than I thought it could be' | William Sutcliffe: 'It was so much more brutal than I thought it could be' |
| (6 months later) | |
| William Sutcliffe, best known for his satirical take on gap year travel, Are You Experienced?, is moving into writing for young adults with The Wall – and he isn't expecting it to go unnoticed. | William Sutcliffe, best known for his satirical take on gap year travel, Are You Experienced?, is moving into writing for young adults with The Wall – and he isn't expecting it to go unnoticed. |
| "If you criticise Israel you are going to be attacked. I expect one of the angles of attack to be: who is this guy?" says the British novelist, who describes himself as a Jewish atheist. "I have tried to be fair, but in describing a situation I'm very clear is unfair." | "If you criticise Israel you are going to be attacked. I expect one of the angles of attack to be: who is this guy?" says the British novelist, who describes himself as a Jewish atheist. "I have tried to be fair, but in describing a situation I'm very clear is unfair." |
| Pitched as a fable, his crossover novel is set in a city split in two by a vast wall. On one side live the privileged, the occupiers – and our hero Joshua. On the other live the desperate, the occupied, and when Joshua, hunting for his lost football, discovers a tunnel that leads under the wall, he sets in action a series of dreadful consequences. Without making it explicit, it soon becomes clear that this is the West Bank, that Joshua, 13, is Jewish, and that Leila, the girl who saves his life on the other side of the wall, is Palestinian. | Pitched as a fable, his crossover novel is set in a city split in two by a vast wall. On one side live the privileged, the occupiers – and our hero Joshua. On the other live the desperate, the occupied, and when Joshua, hunting for his lost football, discovers a tunnel that leads under the wall, he sets in action a series of dreadful consequences. Without making it explicit, it soon becomes clear that this is the West Bank, that Joshua, 13, is Jewish, and that Leila, the girl who saves his life on the other side of the wall, is Palestinian. |
| It's an idea that had been rumbling in Sutcliffe's head for years, "that the story of our era is the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and it seemed the wall in the West Bank was very specific to that situation, but also symbolic of other things happening elsewhere". But at first, he wasn't sure if he wanted to make his wall so easily identifiable. Then he heard about PalFest, Palestine's annual travelling festival of literature, and decided he needed to travel to the region. He'd been to Israel before, but after experiencing PalFest, "everything I thought I knew about Israel was shattered. Seeing a military occupation up close, seeing a small number of people with guns telling a large number without guns what to do… it was so much more brutal than I thought it could be." | It's an idea that had been rumbling in Sutcliffe's head for years, "that the story of our era is the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and it seemed the wall in the West Bank was very specific to that situation, but also symbolic of other things happening elsewhere". But at first, he wasn't sure if he wanted to make his wall so easily identifiable. Then he heard about PalFest, Palestine's annual travelling festival of literature, and decided he needed to travel to the region. He'd been to Israel before, but after experiencing PalFest, "everything I thought I knew about Israel was shattered. Seeing a military occupation up close, seeing a small number of people with guns telling a large number without guns what to do… it was so much more brutal than I thought it could be." |
| When he came home, he rewrote, with "the setting a bit closer to the West Bank", the geography more aligned, the city named Amarias, an anagram of Samaria. Then he realised he needed to see how the Jewish settlers were living. He found a tourist company that arranged for him to stay with three different Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and the novel's setting became "almost entirely literal". | When he came home, he rewrote, with "the setting a bit closer to the West Bank", the geography more aligned, the city named Amarias, an anagram of Samaria. Then he realised he needed to see how the Jewish settlers were living. He found a tourist company that arranged for him to stay with three different Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and the novel's setting became "almost entirely literal". |
| "The physical reality is almost like reportage, but the story is fiction," says Sutcliffe, who is married to the novelist Maggie O'Farrell. | "The physical reality is almost like reportage, but the story is fiction," says Sutcliffe, who is married to the novelist Maggie O'Farrell. |
| He always intended The Wall to be for young adults, but found as he was writing that he was doing it for two audiences. "I was trying to write two different books at the same time. My model was Animal Farm – for younger readers it's a farmyard story; for adult readers it's obviously about Stalinism. It works for both in different ways," he says. The dystopian vision his own book presents will, he believes, be familiar to children who have read the likes of Patrick Ness and Suzanne Collins, while for adult readers "it's reportage – which is why I went out of my way with the two research trips". | He always intended The Wall to be for young adults, but found as he was writing that he was doing it for two audiences. "I was trying to write two different books at the same time. My model was Animal Farm – for younger readers it's a farmyard story; for adult readers it's obviously about Stalinism. It works for both in different ways," he says. The dystopian vision his own book presents will, he believes, be familiar to children who have read the likes of Patrick Ness and Suzanne Collins, while for adult readers "it's reportage – which is why I went out of my way with the two research trips". |
| He's also playing on another familiar children's literary motif – that of the portal from the mundane to a world of fantasy. "What's happening in this book is a kid living in a complete fantasy, who discovers a portal to reality. I'm taking the cliche and turning it upside down," he says. "I've been with the settlers… and I think they are living in a world of complete fantasy." | He's also playing on another familiar children's literary motif – that of the portal from the mundane to a world of fantasy. "What's happening in this book is a kid living in a complete fantasy, who discovers a portal to reality. I'm taking the cliche and turning it upside down," he says. "I've been with the settlers… and I think they are living in a world of complete fantasy." |
| Utterly different from his previous five novels, from his debut, New Boy, set in a private school, to his most recent, Whatever Makes You Happy, about three friends' relationships with their mothers, The Wall has, admits Sutcliffe, been "a huge struggle" to write, but "I've gradually got to grips with a subject that is so complicated that you have to read everything around before you can even open your mouth." | Utterly different from his previous five novels, from his debut, New Boy, set in a private school, to his most recent, Whatever Makes You Happy, about three friends' relationships with their mothers, The Wall has, admits Sutcliffe, been "a huge struggle" to write, but "I've gradually got to grips with a subject that is so complicated that you have to read everything around before you can even open your mouth." |
| And how will he answer those anticipated critics? "It is illegal for an Israeli to visit downtown Ramallah or Bethlehem, and Palestinian writers are not going to visit the settlements, so the answer to the question "who am I to write it?" is that no Israeli or Palestinian could write it. Because only a foreigner can see both sides of the wall," he says. | And how will he answer those anticipated critics? "It is illegal for an Israeli to visit downtown Ramallah or Bethlehem, and Palestinian writers are not going to visit the settlements, so the answer to the question "who am I to write it?" is that no Israeli or Palestinian could write it. Because only a foreigner can see both sides of the wall," he says. |
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