By Two writers based in Dubai. Their books — historical fiction — set in diverse eras — one in 1930s Germany and the other in 16th century Turkey and England. How did they conceive these intriguing plots from a past they had not lived in — what were their points of reference, their inspiration and their writing process? As part of a talk at the Emirates Literature Festival the writers gave the audience an insight into researching and writing gripping historical fiction.
Film producer Daniela Tully’s debut novel Hotel on Shadow Lake is based on a mysterious disappearance and family secrets that date back to New York in 1910s and Germany in 1930s. The book is inspired by a personal experience involving a letter received by Daniela’s grandmother from her twin brother after the fall of the Berlin Wall 46 years after he had sent it. Rehan Khan’s book, the first of the Tudor Turk trilogy, is titled The Chronicles of Will Ryde and Awa Maryam al Jameel. Set in Istanbul in 1591 the story revolves around the theft of Moses’ precious staff from the Topkapi Palace. It is Rehan’s third book following the Tasburai series of novels.
The idea for this book, said Rehan, came while on a family holiday in Turkey. “The inspiration first set in when I laid my eyes on Moses’ staff at the Topkapi Palace,” he recalled. Rehan then went on to club this idea with an interesting observation that he had about the Tudor period. He found out that there were strong associations between England and the Ottoman empire in that era, even King Henry the eighth, used to emulate Ottoman sultans by dressing in long robes and turbans. “This was a fascinating detail that I explored and found out that in 1591 England was really ostracised, thanks to the Spanish Armada of 1588, the Catholics of Europe were against the Protestants. At that time England reached out to the Ottomans and to the Moroccans, so Protestant England’s closest allies were Muslims. This inter-religious interaction was a great setting for a cross-cultural novel,” he revealed.
So, in the Tudor Turk — termed as a Mission Impossible in the sixteenth century — when Moses’ wooden staff gets stolen, a team of hand-picked trusted warriors from different parts of the world are assembled to retrieve it. Called Ruzgar — the Wind– the team includes Awa, the studious daughter of a noble family from west Africa’s Songhai Empire; Will, a boy from London who was enslaved by a Moroccan warship and an army of Turkish, Albanian and Greek comrades led by a Bosnian hero Mehmed Konjic.
Daniela’s book, on the other hand, stemmed from an emotional real life incident. “I was only 14, and one day after school when I reached home, I found my grandmother, sitting at the kitchen table sobbing, holding a yellowing letter with a stamp of Adolf Hitler in her hand,” she said. “That letter was from my grandmother’s twin brother, a German fighter pilot, who died in the second world war. He wrote it as a farewell letter to his sister and mother when he saw that death was nearing. Ironically, it was held up in the East, when the Berlin wall was erected, and reached only in 1990, 46 years after it was written.”
Her book Hotel on Shadow Lake features Maya, the young protagonist living in Germany, searching for her beloved grandmother Martha who disappeared without a trace many years ago when 27 years later Martha’s body is discovered in Montgomery Resort in upstate New York. Unravelling Martha’s story takes readers to Germany in 1930s during the Third Reich regime and New York in 1910.
While Rehan admitted being an avid observer of history Daniela said that she never enjoyed studying the subject while in school. But growing up in Germany she was well-versed with the Nazi history and years later while writing her book she topped up her knowledge with more research about the second world war. Her grandmother had also shared several emotional stories about the war. Writing the novel took Daniela several years as she wrote the first draft as early as in 2012.
Learning and discovering cross cultural influences is a continuing passion for Rehan, who works in the telecom sector in Dubai. He is intrigued by how different cultures and civilizations take information from each other. To write The Tudor Turk that took him only six months he researched from academic books and also used his imagination to rethink about settings in a certain time period.
Both writers are already working on their next novels– Daniela is writing one set in Dubai and Rehan has two more books in the Tudor Turk trilogy.
#Daniella Tully, #Emirates literature Festival 2019, #Hotel on Shadow Lake, #Rehan Khan, #Tudor Turk