IT is fascinating to hear Kamila Shamsie, one of Pakistan’s few young, English novelists, speak of her preferences in movies, music and books, for like everything else about her, her tastes are unique.
For one thing, her favourite movie is the 1940s black-and-white classic Sunset Boulevard. She describes it as “a great story of power and corruption in Hollywood. It looks at how fame gets into people’s heads. The story is beautifully written, the film intelligently made, and the acting is brilliant.”
The other movie Kamila speaks very highly of is also unusual. A Spanish film called Talk to Her. Directed by Pedro Almodovar, it is “a quirky, imaginative movie to do with love.” The film is about two women lying in coma and the men who care for them. Says Kamila, “The story is beautiful and the direction great. You get so wrapped up in the movie that you are not aware that the film is in Spanish and you are reading sub-titles in order to follow it.”
Surprisingly enough, Kamila’s all-time favourites also includes Wizard of Oz. Says she, “There is something about watching movies you have seen in childhood and never forgotten. They make you feel like a kid again when you re-watch them. I had expected to find the film quite outdated this time round, considering the advanced special effects used in movies these days, but, instead, found the scenes with the flying marquees still scary! And knowing the lines beforehand made the movie fun to watch and not at all boring.”
Kamila’s taste in music seems to be as varied as her taste in movies. Her favourite song is Night Swimming by R.E.M, which, she feels, “has a great mood and atmosphere. It brings to you the kind of peace you get when you are at the beach at night, and makes you get into a mellow mood. It has a haunting music and is incredibly evocative.”
Also among her favourites is Beethoven’s brilliant masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony. Clarifies Kamila, “I am not into classical music at all. This one was presented to me when I was a student in the US and I used to hear it while driving on the beautiful country roads. So, it always brings back memories of those long drives, but the music is so stirring that no matter where you are, listening to it makes you feel the world is full of possibilities.”
Kamila is also fond of all of Nusrat Fateh Ali’s numbers, particularly Allah-Hu, the words of which she finds very moving and evocative. She recalls hearing the maestro sing the qawwali live at a musical programme and getting goose-bumps sitting there in the audience. “It made my hair at the back of my neck stand up. I think the words and his voice came as close to perfection as possible,” says the writer.
Among the young novelist’s favourite books is an anthology of poems called Country Without A Post Office, by Agha Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri poet who was her teacher. Says she, “I admire his work very much and although he writes a lot about Kashmir, which is a subject writers tend to get rhetorical about, he never loses sight of the aesthetics, and writes incredibly beautifully. He uses extraordinary lush language and you can hear his voice coming through in his works.”
Shamsie also enjoys reading fiction and her favourite is Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Having read its translation, she says about the book, “It is not a novel. The writer is visualizing Marco Polo and Kublai Khan sitting together, with Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan about the imagined cities he has been to. A slim book, it is a piece of very creative and smart writing.
“The cities he describes become metaphors for desire, love, etc. One would expect a good writer to maybe come up with ten such cities, but Calvino comes up with 60, and all highly ingenious, non-repetitive and interesting. Although he does not devote more than a paragraph or two to each city, he makes you want to keep the book down and think of what you have read after each description. It is remarkable that a book can be so demanding of its reader.”
The other book that Kamila thoroughly enjoyed when she read it is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Having read it in her college days, though, she is not so sure if she would still enjoy it as much if she read it today. She feels that the book made her realize the power of language. “The voice in which the book is written draws you to it. It makes you feel complacent and peaceful and then shakes you up.”
A recently published book, called Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell, also features as one of Kamila’s favourites. Says she, “Every chapter is set in a separate city, and Mitchell casts his imaginative net over the entire globe, creating these fascinating connections with ideas he has played with.”
FAVOURITE MOVIE: Sunset Boulevard
FAVOURITE MUSIC: Night Swimming, by R.E.M.
FAVOURITE BOOK: Country Without A Post Office, by Agha Shahid Ali
IT is fascinating to hear Kamila Shamsie, one of Pakistan’s few young, English novelists, speak of her preferences in movies, music and books, for like everything else about her, her tastes are unique.
