Guest feature by Jamila Gavin: the research and influences behind MY SOUL, A SHINING TREE, Nero Prize category winner

"I knew that many Indians (1.5 million) had volunteered for the First World War, and I wanted their unknown stories to be represented."

Jamila Gavin was born in the foothills of the Himalayas in Mussorie, India, in 1941. After the war, her family relocated to England where she spent the remainder of her childhood.

Those first experiences of life at that time, between two countries and cultures, became the main inspiration for much of Jamila's writing. She wanted to reflect the changing face of multicultural Britain, knowing the importance of every child being able to find their mirror image in books. Her first book, The Magic Orange Tree, was published in 1979, followed by numerous other short stories, collections and several novels including The Surya Trilogy (Egmont,) Coram Boy, (Egmont: winner of the Whitbread Children’s Prize 2000) and Blackberry Blue, (Random House.) She lives in Stroud. Find out more on her website.

'I have inherited two rich cultures which have run side by side throughout my life.'

Some books seem to leap, almost fully formed into the mind, with the characters waiting for you to notice them, name them, and build them into the narrative. Coram Boy started life like that, for which I researched on the hoof – so to speak – as the narrative took hold.

Although Coram Boy was fiction, it was set in a real period, with one or two historic characters, so research was essential. In any case, research is my main way of confirming that my plots work – and that it could have happened. This is especially the case with the so-called “historical” novel; you always take a chance, when writing fiction in the context of real history. There’s always someone who is bound to wag the finger, and say, “Aaah! That didn’t happen” or, “you got that wrong!” Then your whole book can lose its credibility. In any case, for me, to fully engage with the plot and the period, I need to satisfy myself that my scenario and characters were as thorough and as credible as could be in fiction.

My Soul a Shining Tree started life as a contribution to an anthology, Stories of WW1, commissioned by Tony Bradman. I knew that many Indians, (1.5 million) had volunteered for the First World War, and I wanted their unknown stories to be represented in this anthology. In researching, I came across Khudadad Khan, a British Indian soldier in the Regiment of the Duke of Connaught’s 129th Own Baluchis. It was his uniform that clinched it – especially the red trousers - my title was definitely going to be The Man in the Red Trousers. Everything else had to make that title viable.

The original short story, set in in WW1, involved a young ten-year old Belgian character, Lotte. Lotte lives with her family on a farm in the village of Gheluveldt in Flanders, where she encounters a man in red trousers.

But to make it a novel, as Tony Bradman later recommended, I needed to extend the scenario, which had started with Lotte and Khudadad Khan, to Ernst, an under-age German Cavalry hussar. I knew what I wanted Ernst’s character to be. However, to make sure his story was viable: I found myself seeking out a book I had heard of, by Robert Musil: The Confusions of Young Törless. This book confirmed what I knew was most likely to be the case in a German military boarding school where Ernst was sent: the bullying, the need to find a way to survive, and the friendships that developed. I also felt certain that the issues I had read about many years earlier in Tom Brown’s School Days, by Thomas Hughes, would also apply to Ernst in his school.

Finally, almost insisting on a voice too, was a walnut tree, which dictated the title. It became their shelter, and was also able to observe the characters and events into which they all got swept up. I even researched the walnut tree to be sure it could actually have grown in Flanders. The deeper I delved, the more I wanted to be sure of my facts, so I went to Gheluveldt, to see for myself its geography, and where there was highish ground – so essential to my story. The outcome was My Soul, a Shining Tree. The title is taken from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, Tree and Sky – this poem and so many others by First World War poets were part of my emotional research.

My Soul, a Shining Tree is published by Farshore

Stories of WW1, where Khudadad Khan's story first appeared, is edited by Tony Bradman and published by Orchard. It includes stories by WR contributors Paul Dowswell, Adele Geras, Linda Newbery and Leslie Wilson.

Guest review by Tony Bradman - THE PASSAGE trilogy by Justin Cronin

Tony Bradman has written books for children of all ages. His most recent titles are Anglo-Saxon Boy (Walker), Revolt Against the Romans (Bloomsbury Education) and The Greatest Stories Ever Told, illustrated by Tony Ross (Orchard).

Is it me, or is there still a general air of snootiness about genre fiction in our literary culture? An implicit belief that if a novel features an apocalyptic plot or vampires then it can’t have any literary merit? We could add accessible prose to the charge-sheet, and stories with lots of jeopardy, terrific action sequences and memorable dialogue. To some critics I’m sure that all seems rather, well… vulgar.

I’ve always found that attitude to be enormously irritating, so I’m pleased to say Justin Cronin’s trilogy of doorstep-sized novels make it look as narrow-minded as it really is. His trilogy - The Passage, The Twelve and The City of Mirrors - is an apocalyptic novel with vampires, but it also has enormous literary merit. It explores character and relationships, it has intimacy and grandeur, melancholy and joy. There are passages of technical explanation any writer of science-fiction or thrillers would be proud of, but also moments of genuine lyricism that will linger in the mind. I bought each volume in hardback as they appeared, and was utterly gripped.

The premise does combine several familiar genre tropes. A rogue element of the US government sets in motion a secret project to develop super-soldiers with hugely enhanced physical powers and a capacity for instant self-healing. The catalyst for these changes is a virus discovered in a rare species of Colombian bats, and the first test subjects are a dozen death-row convicts, men who are offered the chance of life if they ‘volunteer’ for the project. But the scientists, government agents and military men seriously underestimate what the virus can do - the convicts are turned into giant vampires who are virtually invulnerable. The inevitable break-out occurs, the test subjects escaping from a secret laboratory - and the apocalypse soon follows.

And what an apocalypse it is, an almost complete extermination of the human race. The original twelve vampires kill thousands, but also spread the virus in order to create more vampires who are like them - and who will be under their control. Before long only small pockets of survivors remain, their outposts dotted across America and completely cut off from each other. But from the beginning we know there is hope. The bad guys - and this is a measure of just how evil they are - also infect a six-year-old girl called Amy with the virus thinking that she won’t turn out to be so dangerous. They’re right - she gains some powers yet doesn’t lose her humanity, although they can never imagine the role Amy will have in the long-term future of our species.

I should point out that Justin Cronin doesn’t tell his enormous tale in a strict chronological sequence. The Passage does begin at the beginning, setting up the premise, introducing the twelve convicts, Amy, and some other key characters. But it quickly leaps 92 years, telling the story of one of the outposts and its people, the descendants of refugees. The storylines in both The Twelve and The City of Mirrors then move backwards and forwards in time, filling in more background detail in the lives of important characters, setting up clues and foreshadowing events to come. All, is resolved at the conclusion of the final book - the stories of individual characters as well as the ultimate fate of the human race a thousand years after the catastrophe.

The trilogy weighs in at something like 800,000 words, and by my reckoning that’s about six-or-seven-novels-worth of material. I was going to say that this puts it on a Tolstoyan scale, but in many respects it’s even bigger that. There’s a huge cast of characters too, many of whom could easily have whole novels devoted to them. But you never get them confused with other characters, or forget what their place is in the overall tale, and that has to be a testament to the sheer craft of Justin Cronin. He manages it all with great aplomb; I was gripped by it all, often re-reading sections.

It’s difficult to convey the sheer quality of the whole thing - until you read it for yourself you’ll have to take my word for it. The trilogy has been very successful in terms of sales, and film rights were bought by Ridley Scott before the first book was published, although now it seems likely to be made into series for television by HBO. If that happens, then I think it could do for the apocalyptic novel what the Game of Thrones adaptation has done for fantasy fiction, ie proved that it’s best done on epic scale on screen as well as in print. And don’t forget, you heard that here first.

The Passage trilogy is published by Orion.