I am Olivia Karnezis, and I will be interviewing my father Panos Karnezis, who is a professional author. He grew up in Greece and moved to England at the age of 25. He studied engineering at Oxford university, but after taking a creative writing course he decided his passion for books and writing was dominant and published his first book (written in English, despite Greek being his native language) in 2002 after 10 years of living in England.
- Why and when did you decide to become an author?
I always liked to read but I hadn’t written anything until the age of 30. When I started to write, I didn’t think I would become a professional writer, I thought it would be a nice pastime. But then, it started taking more and more time from my life and I gave up my job as an engineer to do a course in creative writing in university and become a professional writer.
- How do you begin to think of ideas for your books?
I don’t consciously go out looking for inspiration; it just happens unconsciously from something that I have read or watched on TV, an incident I have seen in the street, or something I have heard others talk about.
- Where do you generally start your books (beginning, middle)?
The books that I write are mostly about people’s behaviours and motivations, and although there are always some elements of plot, they are not driven by suspense. I like to start in the middle of a story, in the sense that there are many things that happened before the beginning of the book, which the reader gradually learns as the story unfolds.
- How does it feel writing in a different language to your native language?
I used to read in English when I still lived in Greece, for several years before I started to write, and the idea of writing in that language did not seem so strange. Inevitably, it was harder – the grammar, the syntax etc. that writing in Greek, my mother tongue, but I soon felt comfortable writing in English. One of the greatest benefits of writing in a language which is not my mother tongue is that I can keep emotional distance from my subjects, who are usually of Mediterranean heritage, and that I hope makes me more objective when I come to describe their actions and motivations, etc.
- Who is your favourite character from any one of your books and why?
It’s difficult to say, but if I had to choose one, I would say the English Catholic priest, one of the few English characters I’ve ever written about, in my novel The Fugitives. I felt close to his feelings of disillusionment about religious faith and his solitude in a foreign land (he lives in a tropical rainforest in South Mexico, among people whose language he doesn’t speak, and customs he does not understand fully).
- Is there a specific topic that runs through most of your books?
I haven’t thought about it much, but I would say solitude, estrangement and failure. They are probably themes that always find their way into my stories, in one form or another.
- What is a topic/genre you like reading about and why?
I like real life adventure stories, books about exploration and biographies of authors. These days, I read more non-fiction than fiction books, maybe because as a writer I can see the tricks that the fiction writer is pulling on their reader, and that takes away some of the “innocence” of reading and enjoying a novel.
- What is one issue/topic you feel isn’t addressed enough or even avoided in literature?
It’s difficult to say, people from minorities, books set in ethnic communities are still under-represented in literary production. This is because the publishing world is inevitably dominated by people from the majority of the population, e.g., white, middle-class people with an urban upbringing who unsurprisingly mostly choose to publish books that reflect their own experience.
- As an author, what tips would you give to a young writer?
I would say to read everything that falls into your hands, not just literature, magazines, surfing the internet, etc. and keep writing. Don’t expect to have a great idea or inspiration immediately when you are writing. The habits of reading and writing themselves is what gives birth to ideas, characters, situations etc., so you shouldn’t lose heart if an idea you have doesn’t unfold the way you would like it to when put on a page.
- What books would you recommend to a young author in KS3?
I haven’t read children’s or young adult books in many years, but the book that stayed with me, which I read a while ago, was The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for its universality, sensitivity and poetic language. Although it has simple language and plot, in order to truly understand and appreciate it, one should read it in their teenage years or even later.
