I remember when my partner came home with the book in 2008. The cover was a monochrome landscape, the oceans light grey waves crashing to the shore, juxtaposed against the ink black sky. I fell in love with the cover.
The book is The Boat and its writer, Nam Le was not yet thirty when he published his collection of short stories. I read them for the first time when we were travelling, and much of my reading was done on trains and planes, interrupted by arrivals, departures, or changes. The second time I read The Boat was back here, in Australia, and I binge read it in one go. I read it for a third time leading up to the festival, and it struck me how tautly edited (in a good way) the book was.
The Boat became a huge success nationally as well as internationally, commercially as well as prize- winning, and it still has life left in it. Downstairs after the Nam Le talk, there was a sizeable queue of people wanting their books signed. A lot of them had new editions.
But I had been wondering what happenend to Nam Le. He is in the unenviable position of having to follow up on this hugely successful debut. There must be a lot of pressure. In 2008 you could barely catch public transport without seeing at least a couple of people reading his book.
He was a relaxed, engaging conversationalist at the festival, and it turns out, not surprisingly, that he has been keeping busy. He has been working as an editor, and writing his next book. It was illuminating to hear him speak about the editing process, and it turns out he is a rather extremist example of an editor. His new novel is a work in progress, but he has scrapped pretty much the whole draft and started again. This novel, perhaps about Thai pirates, will be completely re-written before it sees the light of day.
The Boat went through a similar editing process. There are stories in the boat that don't contain one word of their previous draft. And it worked well for Nam Le's first book to be so ruthless. I can't wait till the next one is published.
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