5 Minutes With Dubai Based Author Avni Doshi
Bazaar spoke to the woman behind the book shortlisted for 2020’s Booker Prize Award
Doshi’s debut novel, “Burnt Sugar”, focuses on a fractious mother-daughter relationship which shocked India. The story follows Antara as she copes with her mother, Tara’s, mental decline whilst harbouring much resentment about the neglect she faced her childhood.
The author’s style of mixing cutting remarks with caustic wit, make for a tantalizing read. Much praise from fellow authors such as Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love) and Olivia Sudic (Sympathy) has been levied upon Doshi and Team Bazaar was lucky enough to get 5 minutes of her time.
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia (HBA): What were the early influences on your writing and how do they manifest in your work?
Avni Doshi (AD): Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been important for all of my creative pursuits, particularly A Hundred Years of Solitude. I worked in the art world for a long time, and memory, amnesia and the archival impulse all featured in the exhibitions I curated. I read a lot of philosophy during that time too, and it was all influential in various ways. Reading Bataille shifted my understanding of hierarchies of beauty and blasphemy. Reading Deleuze challenged the way I thought about desire.
HBA: Your book delves deeply into the tumultuous relationship between a mother and her daughter. How do you deal with the emotional impact of a book (on yourself) as you are writing the story?
AD: It is really hard to say how creating a work of art forms (or deforms) the maker. I’m sure there is some psychic toll, but I don’t know what that looks like yet. I don’t do anything to protect myself from my work. In fact, I think that would defeat the aim. I have to be open and vulnerable to understand what the character is experiencing.
I have noticed that a lot of readers found the book more difficult and disturbing than I did. I’ve been surprised by people’s reactions. Maybe being on the inside of the creative process offers its own kind of protection, or maybe I have a high threshold for emotional discomfort.
HBA: Who is your favourite writer?
AD: Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Jenny Offill are all remarkable writers. Inventive and intelligent. It would be hard for me to pick just one.
HBA: What book is currently on your bedside table?
AD: I recently finished Luster by Raven Leilani, which was excellent. At the moment I’m waiting for my copy of Women Dreaming to arrive. It’s a Tamil novel by Salma, translated by Meena Kandasamy.
HBA: What are you working on next?
AD: I just gave birth a couple of months ago, so I haven’t had a lot of time to work on anything new. I’ve been writing fragments of things in the margins of books and on receipts. But I’m sure I will start working on another novel soon.
HBA: If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?
AD: I spend a lot of time thinking about spaces and how people inhabit them, and I think interior design could be interesting for me.
Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey and is currently based in Dubai. She won the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize in 2013 and a Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 2014. Her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, is shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and is being translated into more than 20 languages.
Lead image supplied