I posted about Naomi Alderman’s book, “Disobedience: A Novel,” here. Cara Wides of SomethingJewish recently interviewed Alderman:

Alderman swears she is not in anyway a celebrity: “My life is not glamorous – I wake up, write three pages of longhand in bed, get dressed, work for a period of time, walk in the park….” She adds that she enjoys watching the TV programme “Masterchef goes Large” – a leisure pastime that is galaxies away from being drunk at the Groucho Club.

With a bit of encouragement, Alderman admits that she is enjoying some aspects of her fame: “I did get recognised in the street once, which was great.

“Also, since this has happened, I have had some offers of interesting writing projects I could be involved with, so I feel very lucky.” She is working on a new book, about a group of friends who meet at Oxford University, where Alderman studied. “It’s quite a different book, there is a Jewish character but no strong Jewish theme.” She stops in her tracks, in the belief that talking about the plot too much will “jinx it”, meaning that she won’t be able to get it down on paper if she describes it out loud first.

Alderman would like to write a TV show, but reckons she has “three books queuing up in her mind, waiting to be written”. This queuing process started many years ago, as she began writing a novel while at school. Sadly this was abandoned after three chapters.

“It was about a girl who had magical powers, but once I’d given her the powers, I didn’t manage to work out what she would do with them,” Alderman chuckles.

However, she would never let go of her dream of being a novelist, and was ecstatic after hearing about her publishing deal, because she’d “wanted to be a writer for 15 years.”

The process of getting Disobedience into print was an unusually smooth one. Between 2003 and 2004 Alderman studied on the famous Creative Writing MA Course at the University of East Anglia (many ex-students have gone on to be successful), and began writing the book during her time there. While she was there she won a short story competition, and the agency running it offered to help her find a publisher. Viking snapped the book up almost immediately after it was finished.

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