LAHORE: Discussing his critically acclaimed debut novel ‘The Scholar,’ British writer of Jamaican and Bajan heritage, Courttia Newland says the novel was his own life story and his visualisation of it.

“The main character revolves around me. He was raised in West London where I was raised. He goes to a school where I went. It (the novel) is a visualisation of pre-colonial Africa where there is no racism and social justice defines life.”

Talking to Varda Dar of the British Council, Newland said he had tried to see things from a different angle in his novel.

He accepted colonialism as a fact of life and then tried to minus it from life, seeing things without it and that shift helped him produce the novel, he added.

The novelist said though he was trying to resist white racial supremacy in the novel, he ended up promoting black supremacy, projecting a world where black customs and black spirituality ruled.

When asked where he placed himself in a debate raging in literary circles if the pandemic had inspired the people to write or it had killed inspiration, Newland said that he thought both the cases might be partially true as it worked in different ways for different people.

About characterisation, Newlandthought it came easy to him because the whole thing was revolving around his own self and real characters around him. “So, it was not much of a struggle for me.”

Advising the new aspirant writers, Newland, the author of eight novels, said, “Keep working, keep writing”.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2021