'I found the novel as I wrote it'

Anjali Joseph, who lives in the UK but has spent much of her life in Mumbai, was recently chosen as one of the Telegraph’s Top 20 novelists in the UK under 40, a great accolade for a first-time novelist. IBNLive caught up with Anjali Joseph, the author of Saraswati Park

IBNLive: How long was ‘Saraswati Park’ in the making?
Anjali Joseph: Eighteen months. The ideation and the writing pretty much happened at the same time. I didn't start out with the entire thing in my head, I found it as I wrote.

IBNLive:: What DID you start with?
Anjali Joseph: A short story about Mohan (one of the three central characters) and the day that he found the booksellers were being evicted. So basically what became the first chapter of the novel.

IBNLive:: What made you decide to amplify it?
Anjali Joseph: I'd been writing short stories and with most of them there was no real sense in my head of 'What happens next?' But with this one I felt it was only a start. And a friend who read it asked me if it was the start of a novel. I said 'no no no' but thought 'maybe'... And then I just wrote a bit every day for the next six months or so till I had a draft.

IBNLive:: Six months is brilliant for a novel of what... 75,000 words?
Anjali Joseph: It's just under 70,000 words, but six months was for a raw first draft and then there were several more drafts.

Full interview here IBNLive