 North Melbourne Books: Jia Jia lives with her husband, Chen Hang, in their large Beijing apartment. One morning she finds her husband dead in the bath, his head submerged in the water. Nearby is a strange picture he has drawn of a man with a fish's body. As Jia Jia tries to piece her life back together again, she travels to Tibet and finds herself on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. What gave you the idea for the novel?
An Yu: I began with a vague story of an aftermath, of a widowed woman who didn’t love her husband but was nonetheless emotionally and psychologically dependent on him. And then I had the idea of a fish man (it came to me in a dream!). The eeriness of the image felt fitting to the story of Jia Jia and all the uncertainty she’s going through, so I began experimenting with it. The idea of this other watery world soon began seeping into the narrative; the fish man also founds its role within this world, and as that happened, the story also became more than an aftermath as it extended into Jia Jia’s past as well as to the lives of other characters around her. NMB: As the story progresses, it becomes more evocative and contains many dream sequences where Jia Jia falls into a “world of water” – a place that could be described as a state of pure being, of almost nothingness. These parts of the story seem open to interpretation. What would you describe as the novel’s theme? AY: This is such a difficult question for me since I don’t really write with a particular thread of theme in mind. I love the way novels can move through different ideas and spaces that all contribute to something more than the sum of its parts, so to narrow down a theme is quite the exercise. But having said so, there are things I do tend to write a lot about. Many of the characters in this novel are looking for a sense of belonging – of home. I think the idea that boundaries (between the real and the surreal, the past and the present, the physical and the psychological) are fluid and always shifting is incredibly enticing, and I love watching characters travel between these realms looking for where they belong. NMB: There are elements of magic realism in Braised Pork. Are you inspired by any magic realist writers in particular? AY: I’m a sucker for stories that incorporate the surreal in one way or another, whether it’s something as subtle as a strangeness in mood or something that is set entirely in another world. In this regard, I always enjoy reading the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Kazuo Ishiguro, George Saunders, and Haruki Murakami. NMB: You were born and raised in Beijing, then left to study in the US. You write your fiction in English. What made you decide to write in English? AY: I write in both Chinese and English, and the experience of writing in each language is so different that I never want to decide to write solely in one and not the other. I wrote Braised Pork in English because the distance it gave me allowed for more clarity in the process. I also enjoy the process of trying to find English words for something that is happening in Chinese in my mind, so that what I end up writing down on the page feels like it has something from both languages. It’s a liberating feeling, to know that one language can capture the experience of another. NMB: What books are you enjoying reading at the moment? Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf has been wonderful company. Braised Pork, by An Yu. Published by Harvill/Secker. $29.99 |
