A Conversation with Eric Chacour
First of all, I would love to know more about your journey to becoming a novelist and the process of writing What I Know About You?
Well, the journey was a long one! I think it took me something like 15 years to write this novel. To be honest, there were some years when I was focusing very intensly on it, and some when I wasn’t touching my manuscript at all. And I also had the privilege of this being my debut novel, so I wrote it without any pressure – I took my time, it was like my hobby.
And in terms of becoming a writer, it’s funny because when I was a teenager, my dream was to write lyrics, mainly for Céline Dion, of course! But the issue was that I couldn’t play an instrument, and I couldn’t compose music. So, I decided to do the next best thing, which was to write a novel, because it only depended on me. So here we are.
In terms of your style, did you have any particular inspiration or authors that you really look up to?
My usual answer to this is that I was very inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Of course, I cannot say that lightly when talking to somebody in Great Britain! But Shakespeare’s plays have such incredible mechanisms which I wanted to use in my novel. I was actually mostly inspired by theatre, movies, and music, as opposed to novels.
You have an incredible way of writing conveying such strong meaning and complex ideas but using such precise and controlled and perfectly formed sentences, so I wanted to ask about your editing process! Were you very meticulous about every detail of your writing?
Thank you! Well, this was actually quite a challenge for my translator, Pablo, because there were many sentences he couldn’t translate using only one sentence. He would tell me that, if I wanted to keep the same level of nuance, he would have to translate it into three sentences. And it’s funny because, depending on where the sentence was located in the novel, my answer was very different! For some sentences, I told him I’d prefer to keep the correct level of nuance, so I was happy for it to become three sentences: but, in other parts, the most important thing was the music of the text, so I didn’t mind if we lost some of the meaning.
I had many conversations with my various translators about musicality, and I remember that I had a conversation with my Spanish translator who told me, ‘Okay, here in your sentence you talk about ‘le manque’, which can mean different things in French – the lack of something, to miss somebody, or the state of living in poverty. And she asked me, ‘What do you mean by “manque” in this sentence? And I said, well if you count the number of syllables in these two sentences, it’s very symmetrical, so I don’t even know what I was thinking about when I chose that word, but I’m pretty sure I used it because it was monosyllabic! I think she thought I was completely crazy but, for me, musicality is tremendously important.
That is fascinating! Onto the content of your book, the narrative takes place with a backdrop of a changing Egypt - could you give a very brief summary of where Egypt is as a country during this period and why you chose to set your novel in this specific time and place?
The novel takes place in the Egypt of the late 20th century in a very specific community, the Levantine community, which was composed of mostly Syrian and Lebanese people. There were many generations of the Levantine community; they mostly speak French before Arabic, they’re mostly Christian, and they see themselves as a kind of bridge between Western and Eastern countries. So, it is a particular context, and it’s the community where both of my parents are from, although they met in Montreal, where I was born.
The paradox at the heart of What I Know About You is that it is a universal story – well, I wanted it to be a universal story. But you’re right, it’s rooted in a highly specific context, so I was careful to write a story that every reader could relate to, regardless of the cultural and social backdrop.
Yes, 100%. I always love those kinds of novels, and I actually think that the more specific and unfamiliar the context for a reader, the more it makes you feel that, at the end of the day, human emotions will always be relatable.
Exactly. You know, there is a wedding scene in the book, and I knew I wanted to write it – I didn’t want to jump forward in time and find the characters married, I really wanted to write the scene. But I didn’t want to do a full description of a traditional Egyptian wedding, the meal and the dresses, and all the specific details. Instead, I wanted to write this moment from a point of view that everybody could relate to, so I decided to start with a conversation between a father and his daughter when the reader understands that the daughter is at the point of being married because I thought the emotion of that moment would be easier for readers to imagine and relate to.
Some reviewers have summarised the plot of your book as an exploration of the tensions between personal desire and cultural expectation, and the sense that humans are - in some ways powerless to both. Was the idea of powerlessness something that you wanted to explore?
In a way, yes, but what I actually care the most about is always the characters’ personal struggles. You know, those daily ordeals that twist their stomachs when they get up in the morning – that’s the most important thing for me. And of course, this is always influenced in some ways by the complex world they are living in but, you know, sometimes we can know people very well – we can be very close to them – but we don’t actually know their inner turmoil. So, the context of my book is very important to me, but it’s only ever in the background. I think my novel is more about beating hearts – the people, their struggles, and their beating hearts.
The three sections of your novel present different perspectives, and it begins with a section written in the second person, which is so hard to do effectively! I wondered how and why you chose this structure and how were you able to maintain a sense of intimacy across all different perspectives?
A reviewer actually described What I Know About You as a poetic detective novel, and I think that’s such a wonderful way of describing it! I really wanted to create that tension you find in detective novels, and using the second person was a fundamental part of that. I wanted readers to be making their own inquiry, trying to find out who the narrator is. I wanted to create that effect of, ‘Oh, this is a bit disturbing, why is the author talking to me?’ I wanted to create the effect of surprise.
As we read, we forget about that inquiry for a little bit; readers might think it was only a little bit of music of that particular story, but all of a sudden, you think, ‘Of course, if there is a “you”, then there is an “I”, and if there is an “I”, is it someone I already know, or someone I’m going to know?’ So yes, even though I wouldn’t have put it like that, I was very happy to have my book described as a poetic detective novel!
So, the structure was always very closely tied to your plot?
Yes. In the first draft, I think the moment of realisation occurred later in the novel, but I thought it was a bit too dramatic, and I thought it was better to shed the right amount of light on the narrative by having it appear a little sooner.
The idea of migration and belonging occurs throughout your book in a few different ways, and I wondered what the idea of home and belonging means to you personally?
You’re right, it is a novel about exile, but before anything else, what I wanted to talk about was absence. You know, the kind of paradox you can have in a family, when somebody’s presence is keenly felt even when they are not physically there. So, it’s not so much the exile I was interested in, but the consequences of the taboo created in the family by absence.
What do you think is the value and importance of translated fiction? And how does it feel to know that your book is being read by people all over the world in a different language to the one you wrote it in?
Well, it’s very exciting! I can’t really say anything else, it’s very exciting. And as it’s a debut novel, it’s something that was written on my bed without even thinking it could reach anyone, maybe just my cousins or friends. So, when it is translated and brought to other countries with different references, it’s always very exciting. Actually, my publisher from Canada was joking with me and was telling me that the book will be translated in Japanese, which does not happen very often with novels from Quebec, so all they will know about Quebec literature in Japan will take place in Egypt! But yes, it is so great to have so much feedback from different groups of people with their own social and cultural contexts and ideas. Also, I think one of my proudest moments was finding out that the book will be translated in Arabic in early 2025. I am so proud about that because this book is a love letter to Egypt.
And our last question is, do you judge a book by its cover?
I do! I shouldn’t, but I do… And I have to say that the British cover is one of my favourites. I was a bit shocked at first because it looked more like a poster for a movie, but now I really do think it’s one of my favourites. Besides, we are currently carrying out tests for the cover of the German version and my publisher there had a specific idea. When they saw the English cover, they reconsidered their first idea and took inspiration from that one!
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