Manju Kapur / Features / Untitled Books

"For thirty years I taught in an undergraduate women’s college. I gave up this job recently to become a full time writer."

Photograph: © Milan Mugdil

Manju Kapur

Prize-winning author of The Immigrant and Home, New Delhi-based Manju Kapur tortures herself and a friend to perfect her writing craft.

Where are you right now?
New Delhi, India.

Where do you write?
At home.

How do you write?
On a laptop - no fixed place, no fixed time, though I do prefer mornings.

What keeps you writing?
Good question. It's the most difficult thing I have ever done. That challenge brings its own affirmation, its own sense of achievement, however tenuous.

Who do you write for?
Someone like myself.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?
With one particular friend whom I torture with my many drafts.

How do you know if your work is good?
I don't really know when it is good - it's badness is usually what I am struggling against. It might seem good when I am doing a reading - but a lot of distance has to be put between me and my work, for any kind of objective appraisal.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?
Lots. But they lie in the future and will most definitely change.

Which book do you wish you'd written?
Anna Karenina.

What is your literary guilty pleasure?
Reading comic strips and graphic novels.

Which writer made you want to write?
Anuradha Marwah, a friend of mine who has published three novels. Seeing her write made the whole process more accessible. If she could do it, so could I.

Who's the most exciting author writing today?
Hard to choose... Javier Marias, perhaps?

If you weren't writing you'd be...?
A teacher. For thirty years I taught in an undergraduate women's college. I gave up this job recently to become a full time writer.

What next?
A book about a rags to riches politician; the things he does in order to gain power; the things that happen to him as a consequence.

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Manju Kapur's latest novel, Custody, is published by Faber and Faber.
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Thursday, 21 April, 2011