Guy Gunaratne on Mister, Mister, slow art, and room to write

The book’s remarkable success even saw Gunaratne identified as one of the ‘30 Most Exciting Young People on the Planet’ by the Financial Times. But rather than rush a follow-up, in a world that seems to be moving at an increasingly octane pace, they chose instead to take advantage of the time afforded a successful writer. As such, we’ve had five years in which to steel ourselves for Gunaratne’s second novel, Mister, Mister, which was published in May this year. 

Mister, Mister is narrated by its protagonist Yahya Bas, a poet, jihadist, idiot and son, who finds himself in a UK detention centre after fleeing the conflict in Syria. Here he must grapple with many questions – What was he doing in the desert? Why does he hate this country? Why did he write the incendiary verses which turned him into an online sensation and a media pariah? – and how much he truly wishes to answer them.

On 20 September Gunaratne joins us in our Purcell Room, along with fellow novelist Stephen Buoro and poet Daljit Nagra, for a conversation that will explore the commonalities of their work; (un)belonging, self-discovery, the power of poetry, and characters telling stories on their own terms. But, because we couldn’t quite wait until their Southbank Centre appearance, we caught up with Gunaratne in advance to ask them about Mister, Mister, how the novel took shape, and the challenges of committing such a complex story to the page.

It’s been five years since In Our Mad And Furious City was first published. Has the success and acclaim of your first novel sunk in yet?

Yes, I do remember it becoming a little disconcerting when people began to congratulate me, not for writing a good book, but for the number of awards the book had managed to garner, which are two very different signals for a new writer to receive. They sound suspiciously similar. I managed to back away in good time, I think, and was off social media when much of it happened. I relate to that first publication a little differently now. I’ll forever be grateful because it allowed me to keep writing. 

When In Our Mad And Furious City was longlisted for the Booker Prize, you said you hoped that the success and acclaim of your first novel would give you more time and ‘elbow room’ to write your second novel. Did it play out that way?

My instincts were right. The majority of Mister, Mister was written at a desk in Trinity College, Cambridge. This was during a fellow commonership – a sort of arts residency – which was offered to me at that time. I look back at those three years at Trinity – travelling back and forth, while also trying to raise two children – and I can only feel immense gratitude to both Cambridge University, and for my partner, for her patience, and necessary, generative impatience at my getting back home every week. 

‘When writing novels, there is a deep level of self-enquiry that occurs. I am opened up in ways I wouldn’t have anticipated at the outset’.

Guy Gunaratne

Was there a particular moment or event that led you to write Mister, Mister? Or does it come from a broader observation of contemporary attitudes?

There wasn’t a particular moment or event that led me to the questions explored in Mister, Mister. Rather, the agitated state of the world coloured the experience. The book was written between 2017 to 2022 during the fallout after Brexit, the Syrian civil war, a sharp rise in hate-speech in Britain, violent attacks across Europe, and a rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – all these heightened concerns folded into the work, folded into the language and the voice of Yahya, to the point where his story became a conduit to discuss seemingly intractable debates. It allowed me a way to explore transgressive questions about our bodies and our borders too, and about how language can be used to imagine ourselves into prisons or imagine new ways out of them. 

How much did the form taken by Mister, Mister evolve during the writing process? Was it always your intention to have it narrated by the character of Yahya, for example?

Yahya Bas, the character this novel is framed around, emerged as a dangerously unsettled voice early on. He sounded deceptive, evasive. It was obvious his voice was reacting against a kind of ‘othering’ gaze also present in the book. Eventually, that presence became the figure of ‘Mister’ to whom Yahya is relating his story, and with whom he is in playful resistance. The challenge was in how to perform that dance on the page. I knew that the subject matter would provoke volatile reactions in readers, so that tension needed to be adjusted many times over to give the impression that it could spill out at any given moment. A further challenge, and something that took many drafts to get close, was that the form taken – a kind of episodic picaresque, which feels maximal and loud – still had to feel ‘real’ or in relation to our own reality. By that I mean, the story had to be grounded with life, and emotional depth. That needed most time, and I hope makes for a richer and more rewarding reading experience. 

Was Dickens as much of an influence on Mister, Mister as we might infer from the central roles for Estella and Bleaker House and its character arc not far removed from that of Great Expectations?

The best way to answer that is perhaps to say that Dickens is an influence on the way Yahya chooses to tell his story. So it’s the kind of tradition that perhaps Yahya is influenced by, how he, himself, draws the characters that populate his life story. His ‘Many Mothers’ for instance, and the grotesque menagerie he encounters on his travels. Yahya’s world needs to be drawn in a certain way, in a squinted light, because he is aware of who is listening, or reading him. Whenever his inner life is expressed, however, or there is a glimpse of his own interiority, I tried to make sure he still feels very modern. There are traces of different influences when we close in on him, more the writers of self, the interior, that influenced me – Woolf, Eliot, for instance.

‘Novels are a slow art. They seem to work on the conscience in a similar way. That’s part of the beauty of them.’

Guy Gunaratne

Has your background in documentary and film making influenced your approach to storytelling through your writing? And does the latter allow you to explore things in the way the former didn’t?

They are very different ways to tell stories. One commonality is that in making any documentary film, a moment arrives when your presuppositions are revealed, and require change. When I was making documentaries, I became most drawn toward stories that were human rights related. That usually meant, for me, difficult subject matter only became more complex and nuanced. When writing novels, a similar thing happens. There is a deep level of self-enquiry that occurs. I am opened up in ways I wouldn’t have anticipated at the outset.

A common theme across both your books to date is the giving of a voice to individuals who are often othered or ignored when it comes to our modern news cycle. Is giving such a platform something that drives what you do?

It feels very strange to think of novels as platforms in that way. I don’t approach writing on those terms. My subject matter might tackle something in the current public discourse, but I struggle, really, to see how novels, and novel writing, when within the kinds of systems we require to make and distribute books, could be used to foster significant shifts in political discourse, especially in a way that requires the immediacy of our current problems. Novels are a slow art. They seem to work on the conscience in a similar way. That’s part of the beauty of them, it seems to me. Anyway, when it comes to the kind of thing I’m eager to influence politically, I use other methods – like my body, which means my showing up, away from the desk, among other people. 

You’re appearing at the Southbank Centre with Stephen Buoro and Daljit Nagra; have you met either of them before? And what are you looking forward to discussing with them?

I’ve met Daljit before. We met for the first time at the Southbank Centre during a poetry reading with some mutual friends. We sat next to one another in the audience and have since continued a conversation on email. His work is extraordinary. I love his characters more than anything, their voices. We also seem to have similar sensibilities when it comes to the movement of voice and historical narrative. I’ve never met Stephen, but I’m about to dive headlong into his novel which sounds brilliant. 

And lastly, what’s next for you? Is a third novel in the works? Or are you enjoying some much-needed elbow room?

I’m working on the third novel at the moment. It’ll be the first in a kind of triptych, and I’m enjoying the very early stages of it. I’m also working with a theatre director in adapting Mister, Mister for the stage, as well as working on a few other plays and film projects.