LAHORE: Sebastian Faulks, a Francophile novelist, in conversation with journalist Ahmed Rashid in the LLF2021, talked about his shift from a journalist to a novelist.

Replying to a question of Rashid, Faulks said he always wanted to be a novelist from the age of 13 and 14.

“One day, I discovered a book of literature at the age of 14. It excited me and I decided to become a novelist.”

Faulks said though his parents would have preferred him to become a lawyer or doctor, he went for writing novels but he discovered it was difficult to make a living out of it.

“I left university and wrote a novel but it was not published.”

He later got a teaching job then became a journalist.

“My main goal was to become a novelist and I have no problem in doing other jobs.”

Sebastian Faulks said when he was working at The Telegraph newspaper, he published his first book and when he was with The Independent, he had already published four books.

He said he had written books before the age of 21 but they were not good enough to be published.

“Writing a book needs physical strength and you better be relatively young than old to make it.”

He said most novelists would write in old age but most poets did it in their youth with some exceptions.

When Mr Rashid asked him that in his novel,Birdsong,he had written about world wars and how he was fascinated with suffering in the wars, Faulks said he wanted to write about the world wars because as a little boy, he had read the names of the 85 kids written on a board in a school who had died in two world wars.

He said his history teacher in school was reluctant to talk about the names on the board and he later came to know that his teacher’s brother had died in World War. “Around 10m people lost their lives in world wars and he was thinking what kind of creatures does this and what kind of creature could allow it to do this,” he questioned.

Sebastian Faulks said he preferred to read novels to know the ideas behind the wars as a political thought, not just a story.

“My grandfather and father had fought World War-I and World War-II and it was normal in their generations.”

The novelist said his father was shot three times in World War-II, was wounded and had scars in his arms.

He said his grandfather had survived World War-I and he later became a war correspondent.

“During America and Germany war, his grandfather was killed while covering it,” Faulks said.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2021