About
Sonja Price
I
live in Somerset with my family and dog and am a member of the
Romantic Novelists’ Association. My short stories have appeared in
Stories
For Homes,
the Shelter Anthology of Short Stories and In
these Tangles, Beauty Lies,
an anthology in aid of the Beanstalk Trust for children with reading
difficulties. My debut novel The
Giants Look Down
made me a finalist for the Joan Hessayon Award.
About
My Books
Aspiring
writers are often given the advice to write about what they know, but
I do the opposite. One of my short stories is about an Aborgine in
Australia, although I’ve only ever been in transit at Brisbane
airport for forty minutes. I’ve never set foot in Kashmir, but I’ve
based my novel The
Giants Look Down
there.
What
a cheek you may say! But writers go where their imaginations take
them and once mine had been ignited - by a report on the car radio of
the Great Earthquake of 2005- I couldn’t put the spirit back in the
bottle. I discovered that the Vale of Kashmir is breathtakingly
beautiful. Some of the highest mountains in the world cradle a valley
lush in sycamore woods and fields of saffron interspersed with a
necklace of lakes. A spectacular place to set a story, it also boasts
a rich history of maharajas, princes and princesses. But this
paradise has been spoilt by strife since the mostly Muslim Vale of
Kashmir chose to become part of its Hindu neighbour, India. Two wars
have been fought over it and India and Pakistan still stand their
ground on a glacier at the highest battlefield of the world, where
avalanches claim more lives than armed conflict.
There
must be a story in there somewhere, I thought! What would happen if a
10-year-old Hindu girl called Jaya decided to become a doctor much to
the chagrin of her mother and the patriarchal society of 1960s
Kashmir? My aim was solely to entertain and amuse the reader. I did
not want to take sides yet at the same time I tried to depict the
situation as sensitively and genuinely as possible and drawing
attention to the plight of Kashmiris could surely not be a bad thing
in itself, I thought.
I
wanted to show Jaya growing up and negotiating the rapids of love
when she falls for the son of the family she later stays with in
Scotland. Does she have to choose between dashing Alastair, a student
of architecture and lover of jazz music, and her dream of becoming a
doctor and returning to Kashmir to build a clinic far up in the
mountains? Well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out!
Going
to Kashmir, if only in my mind, albeit with the help of online
resources, picture books and interviews with Indians, has been a
wonderful journey that started in my car. My next novel Black
Snake takes
place in the Canadian Wilds. You’ve guessed it – I’ve never
been there either.
Links
You
can find The
Giants Look Down
as a paperback or e-book on:
