By Seb Doubinsky
A writer is first and foremost a reader, but a reader with a writing project of their own. This is why a writer never “just reads” books: he/she/they is/are always working, looking for a spark in other books to ignite their own creativity. It is neither stealing, nor appropriating, but transmuting — transforming a foreign material into one of your own. The list below illustrates this: all these authors have contributed, one way or another, to the construction of my novel “THE SUM OF ALL THINGS”, either by their narratives, their style, their ideas or their opinions. In my eyes, all writing is one way or another re-writing, as everything has already been told before, but not yet in your own words. And this is what literature is all about: creating new identities, new possibilities, new hopes. “THE SUM OF ALL THINGS” is precisely about that. And so are these fantastic books.
1. Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul.
I have always loved Graham Greene, and The Honorary Consul has been a great inspiration for the intricacies of local politics found in my novel The Sum of All Things.
Monique Vittig, Les Guérillères.
Monique Wittig was a French feminist, a lesbian and a literary genius. Les Guérillères is a fabulous poetic manifesto empowering women, and has been a crucial inspiration for one of my main characters, the poet Kassandra.
The Amazons, Adrienne Mayor.
Amazons have a central role in the story and Adrienne Mayor’s book proved a fantastic trove for information.
William Burroughs, Nova Express.
It’s no secret that I hold William Burroughs in extremely high esteem, and Nova Express was the perfect source of inspiration for my drug-fueled alien paranoia plot.
Tabish Khair, The Body by the Shore.
Khair’s novel is an intricate political thriller dealing with the economic and power asymmetries of today’s world, and was very useful for the general geopolitical perspective of my novel.
About Seb Doubinsky
Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual writer born in Paris in 1963. His novels, all set in a dystopian universe revolving around competing cities-states, have been published in the UK and in the USA. He currently lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches at the university.
In New Samarqand, trouble is brewing: The king is very ill, nobody knows who will succeed him and terrorist groups are plaguing the city-state. In the eye of the storm, the National Museum is opening a new wing displaying the magnificent tomb of two Amazon sisters, who fell in battle together. Following parallel lines in this ominous labyrinth, Hokki, the new museum director, Ali the police commissioner, Kassandra, the poet, Thomas, the used-books seller and Vita, the secret agent from Planet X try to keep the pieces together and fight against the forces of chaos threatening their very existence.
