"My books have given comfort to people" – interview with Lindsey Davis

Dodał(a): Michał Mazik
2010-09-07 13:43
Odsłon: 3638
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She is an English writer best known as the author of the Falco series set in ancient Rome. Her books are translated into many languages, serialised on BBC Radio 4 and recorded for audio. About writing, history, favorite writers and awards we talk with Lindsey Davis.

What was your inspiration to create Falko? How does it begin?
I was trying to be a writer, looking for something quite original. (You are not supposed to do that; you are meant to copy some established author, or publishers are terrified). I enjoyed Roman archeology and had the idea for a kind of private eye set in the great city of Rome, which equates to the classic metropolitan settings of ‘gumshoe’ novels. It was a joke to begin with, but I do try to be authentic as well.

So you are interested history and Roman Empire…
Yes, I think most English people who like history feel that the Romans, who ran our country for nearly five hundred years, are in some way ‘ours’. I like many aspects of their culture too.

Since 1989, you wrote 20 books about Falko stories. Do you plan do write next one?
All I know is that after writing the 20th Falco novel (Nemesis) and aslo Falco: the Official Companion in the same year, I need a breather. I do write other things, for instance my epic novel Rebels and Traitors, which is set in the English Civil War and Commonwealth of the Seventeenth Century. Whatever I do next will be a different kind of book.

Andrew Tayor told me, writing novels, criminal stories is lonely job for him. Do you have this same mind? Why did you decide to be a writer?
I always enjoyed writing and was probably born to do it. I probably do have a fairly solitary nature. It is a job where you have to go into your room and get the work done by yourself, and I understand what Andrew means. I don’t share the current fads for constant consultation with ‘peer groups’. A good writer has to have a strong sense of what they want to say and how it must be done, and that is sometimes quite lonely. I never talk about my work until it’s finished, so for most of a year, I have a project that’s only mine.

I found information you’ve been in all places, where you set the stories . Is it true?
I include visiting places as part of the research for a book. Apart from the fact I enjoy doing it, you can get the best sense of a place and unexpected ideas if you go there. But it is not true that I have been to every town my characters have visited, just some.

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