The Booker Prize Podcast, Episode 38: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan’s thrilling novel follows the astonishing adventures of its titular character, Washington Black, whose escape from the brutal cane plantations of Barbados was only the beginning. Shortlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize and set to be released as a glitzy television adaptation starring Sterling K Brown and co-produced by Edugyan later this year, what better excuse to dive into the novel? 

Washington Black is also our Monthly Spotlight for April, find out more here.

Transcripts of The Booker Prize Podcast are generated using both speech recognition software and human transcribers, and as a result, may contain errors.

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Jo Hamya:

Hello and welcome to the Booker Prize Podcast with me, Jo Hamya.

James Walton:

And me, James Walton. Today we’ve got our book of the Month, which is Washington Black by Esi Edugyan shortlisted in 2018 when the winner was Milkman by Anna Burns. Why don’t you tell us a bit about Esi Edugyan?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. She’s got a really impressive list of achievements, tallying even behind being chair of the Book of Judges this year. She wrote her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, at 24 years old. It was shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2005. Then Booker nerds, as you say, will also know her by her second novel, Half-Blood Blues, which is about a mixed race jazz musician, Hieronymous Falk, who is abducted by Nazis in Berlin at one point in the novel. That was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, as it was then. I believe it also won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

James Walton:

Which is a big Canadian. She’s Canadian, isn’t she?

Jo Hamya:

Yes, she’s Canadian. Then her third novel, Washington Black, which is what we’re going to be discussing today, was also shortlisted for Booker in 2018, as you say, and also won the Giller Prize. She also features in, this is another great Booker connection, Margaret Busby’s 2019 anthology, Daughters of Africa. Margaret Busby judged the prize in 2020 the year that Douglas Stewart won.

James Walton:

This is good Booker nerdery.

Jo Hamya:

Thank you so much. I actually pulled that off the top of my head. Can you believe it?

James Walton:

[inaudible 00:01:36] we’ve been doing this too long already.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. I know. Maybe we should go out and touch some grass. Anyway, James, why don’t you give us a summary of the novel?

James Walton:

Well, I’ll just tell you also that one of the reasons we’re doing it is… It’s going to be a drama series on Disney+ later this year. Obviously it’s the book we’re interested in today. Okay. Let me try and summarise it. It’s quite a wild ride actually. It starts off as a sombre slave narrative. It’s set in the Faith Plantation in Barbados in 1830. Washington Black is the name of the main character, known as Wash. He’s got a mother figure called Big Kit, and the book starts with the arrival of Erasmus Wild as the new boss of the plantation and is an incredibly cruel man. Then Big Kit and Wash are invited to the big house to serve a meal. After that, Erasmus’s brother Christopher, known as Tich, invites Wash to be his assistant who looks after him. Now, Wash is terrified of this just being alone with a white man, I think. But he gradually comes to realise that Tich is a lot kinder and a lot less racist than his brother. I know that’s not a very high bar.

Jo Hamya:

The bar is low.

James Walton:

The bar is very, very low. Tich is there for two reasons. He’s gathering material on the cruelty of slavery for abolitionist friends in the British Parliament, but he’s also a man of science and in particular with an interest at this point in hot air ballooning. He recruits Wash as his assistant mainly because he’s just the right weight for the ballast, in fact.

Jo Hamya:

Yes.

James Walton:

But then discovers that he’s amazingly talented at drawing and illustrating and pretty smart at science too. But then something happens, I think we can give it away really. The cousin of Erasmus and Tich who’s visiting commits suicide in front of Wash.

Jo Hamya:

Yes, his name is Philip.

James Walton:

That’s right. His name is Philip. Because he’s alone with him, Wash knows that he’ll be blamed for this and killed, probably not all that quickly. At which point Tich says, “Okay, in that case we’ll escape on the hot air balloon.” They get into the hot air balloon and escape. At this point the book becomes wild adventure. Well, yeah, an adventure yarn, a Treasure Islandy boys adventure thing. The balloon crashes into a ship which is captained by a bloke who’s got a twin brother who is the surgeon on the ship, but you can tell the difference because the surgeon’s missing two fingers. They get dropped off in Virginia where Tich sees a poster which renounces there’s a bounty now of $1000, obviously quite a lot in that time, for the recovery of Washington Black, dead or alive.

Then there’s another adventure aspect there, which is that the man sent to capture him is a guy called Willard, who’s a classic ruthless adventure baddie. Then there’s more adventure stuff because they escape from Virginia on a ship manned by a captain who’s got a treasure map he’s been given by an old salt because on the quest for some barrels of oil that have been left in the Arctic. They pitch up in the Arctic partly because Tich’s father is an Arctic explorer, see what I mean about a bit wild, who has been rumoured to be dead, but Tich isn’t sure and has gone to find his father in the Arctic. Then Tich leaves, and then I don’t want to give too much away, but Wash has lots of more adventures in lots of more places with Willard hot on his trail. Also, a slight Dickensian feel to this, I think, the orphan boy at the mercy of a cruel adult world. At one point he even wanders about graves at night in a Pip from Great Expectations [inaudible 00:04:45].

He also falls in love, further develops his artistic skills, and ends up masterminding the world’s first aquarium in London. By which point he’s still only 18, but still also haunted by memories of Tich and a desire to work out what their relationship meant both to him and to Tich. With this comes another switch of tone then, I think, [inaudible 00:05:02] if you agree. It becomes a exploration or meditation even on what freedom actually is. What Esi Edugyan herself calls a journey of self-discovery and again, an exploration of the uneasy at the very least relationship between Black people and white liberal people in the 19th century and possibly today as well. It also throws in lots of stuff that she’s interested in, like she was interested in 19th century science of marine life in aeronautics.

Jo Hamya:

I’ve been hearing about this, actually.

James Walton:

Good. I’m looking forward to your theories.

Jo Hamya:

I actually think it all makes sense. I thought about this so much last night. Weirdly enough, the book it reminded me most of which we’ve covered on this podcast was The Amber Spyglass because you have this child protagonist who’s growing up and finds himself in the Arctic one day and in the jungle the next, tethered between life and death, never sure when death is going to come for him with a baddie hot on his trail.

James Walton:

Yeah. Not the book you imagine that you’re going to be in for when it starts, as I say, with the cruelties of slavery in 1830 Barbados, or towards the end when it becomes this rather sombre meditation on the nature of freedom. I suppose the question I think I asked you about William Boyd as well, do you think it hangs together? If so, does it matter?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. I actually really think it does hang together. I don’t actually… Having thought about it for a while now, I don’t think it becomes a meditation on freedom. I think it is from the start. It’s just that it becomes a lot more explicit towards the end because by the end, having learned to read and write and having acquired both legal and I guess a personal idea of independence and liberty, Wash is able to express his thoughts. I know this is going to be something we’re going to talk about later, but just purely in terms of his education and training and the ability he has to voice certain thoughts. It’s only explicit at the end because by that point he’s finally attained the ability and I guess also the courage to confront these questions out loud.

James Walton:

Yeah. I think that’s true. But not that he necessarily is able to answer them. I think Esi Edugyan described Wash as a boy of sensitivity and intelligence-

Jo Hamya:

He is.

James Walton:

… seeking his foothold in a world where there can be no real belonging for him.

Jo Hamya:

But do you not think that… Not to spoil too many things, but there’s a mixed race girl he falls in love with towards the middle. This is a large part of his life as a marine biologist and a inventor of the aquarium.

James Walton:

And a genius illustrator.

Jo Hamya:

Yes. But there’s that question that this mixed race girl, Tanna, keeps asking him as he’s searching for Tich after Tich has gone missing, “When will you be satisfied? If I show you the records of your birth? If we find out that Tich can’t be found in Liverpool. He can’t be found in Virginia. We’ve been all over the world looking for him, and you’re never satisfied.” To me, it feels like once he finally does find Tich, he realises that, and this might sound corny, Tanna was his home all along and he can stop running.

James Walton:

That’s interesting. The Tich-Wash relationship is absolutely central to the book and worthy of a bit more [inaudible 00:08:17]. But just before we move on to that, just Wash on his own, is he too good to be true? This 18-year-old prodigy. And also, he’s incredibly virtuous. He does say things like, “I had long seen science as the great equaliser no matter one’s race or sex or faith.”

Jo Hamya:

But that’s not true either, because basically what we’ve got is a boy who is getting two kinds of education. He says when Tich takes him on as an assistant, part protégé, part manservant, that it’s actually one of the cruellest things he’s experienced. Because he gets this very cosseted view of the world, and then he has to go work in the kitchens and the docklands with people spitting on him, hitting him, swearing at him. By this point in the book, he’s disfigured by an explosion accidentally caused by Tich. He’s kind of-

James Walton:

Quite badly disfigured.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah.

James Walton:

[inaudible 00:09:10] very badly burned face.

Jo Hamya:

He’s getting on the one hand a formal education, but he’s also getting, I guess, an education of the real world and a moral one as well. I think sometimes the things he says are maybe naive, but necessarily so because you know that he’s about to encounter something in the world that will disabuse him of that belief. There’s a great quote where he says, “Such were the times I saw myself growing flint-like and bitter and filled with a restlessness beyond all sleep. Out walking one afternoon I picked up a discarded piece of tin in the street, and peering at my reflection there I saw in my eyes a lightlessness, a methodical will for violence. I knew I must move on or kill or be killed.” I think he becomes… I get what you mean in terms of him as a child prodigy.

James Walton:

That bit doesn’t last so long though. Is that bit just before he sees some jellyfish in the water and he has-

Jo Hamya:

No.

James Walton:

He has an epiphany.

Jo Hamya:

No, that’s just as he’s sort of-

James Walton:

And then he gets back to drawing.

Jo Hamya:

This is when he’s landed. He’s just left Nova Scotia because-

James Walton:

Yeah. He’s hanging out among the Loyalists of Canada, which is not a group I knew about. The Loyalists with the people who’d fought with the Brits against the Americans in the War of Independence and then headed north to Canada. He hangs out with them. He does hit at low point at that point, but he bounces back.

Jo Hamya:

Somewhat, but I think there are still… He’s much more prone to irritability. But this is one of the markers of discovering one’s own freedom bit by bit. You do get irritable with people. That you’re allowed to. You won’t be hit for it. You won’t be punished for it in the way that Erasmus might have punished him for talking back. But I take your point with is he too good to be true in the sense of you’ve got this incredibly articulate, brilliant novel told by a boy who is ostensibly illiterate until the age of 11, 12.

James Walton:

Probably longer. Yeah.

Jo Hamya:

But as I said to you last night I think, for some reason we really didn’t have an issue with it when it came to Vernon in Vernon God Little who is illiterate up until the age of 16-

James Walton:

No. That’s-

Jo Hamya:

… and then wrote these sprawling pieces of epic stream of conscious prose.

James Walton:

Yes. In Vernon God Little we thought, well, no bloke of this age and this education would speak like this, would write like this. Then we thought, well, that’s just the way this book works. That’s fine. For some reason I’m more reluctant to do that, but I think the reason I’m more reluctant to it in this case is because a very different book. Vernon God Little was quite cartoony and quite broad brush. This I think is a much more careful portrait of an actual boy growing up and being 18. But then he will say things in his prose like, “He lays side long on the blanket like a Roman senator,” or, “There was a unhappy mirth to his features, like someone greeting a long unseen aunt answered a funeral.” How could he have seen these things? Is the author essentially just speaking slightly on his behalf throughout the book a bit?

Jo Hamya:

To be honest with you, I didn’t really take issue with that so much as… It’s to a much lesser extent, I wouldn’t compare these novels. I think Washington Black is way more accomplished and sensitive and fun to read and brilliant. No offence to the other one.

James Walton:

The other one being?

Jo Hamya:

The one being Paul Harding’s-

James Walton:

This Other Eden [inaudible 00:12:44]-

Jo Hamya:

… This Other Eden. The only bit that I took issue with, which happens in the Harding as well, is that fair enough, Wash learns and we see him learning quite slowly and painfully how to read, how to write. He struggles with it for years. He has that moment of real pride when Tanna gives him a note and she says, “Can’t you read it? I can teach you to read,” and he goes, “You teach me?” But the thing I take issue with is that he is without any training or any encounter with pen and paper or charcoal ever before suddenly the most talented artist that anyone in this novel has ever seen. I worry that part of the way that Wash is humanised to the reader at the start or any value that we’re supposed to find in him and that other characters are supposed to find in him hinges on a Anglophone cultural precept.

He draws really well, therefore he must have something in his soul. But then Edugyan tackles this head on towards the end of the book because there’s a confrontation between Wash and Tich where Wash is asking Tich, “Did you ever see me as your equal, truly?” Tich says, “You were a rare thing,” and Wash says, “Thing? Person. A rare person. Not so rare that I could not be abandoned. Not be replaced. I felt a pain high up in my throat and when I spoke. There was a pressure in my voice I could not control. And so you took in a young black boy and you educated him as if you were an English boy. His benefit though was so that you might write about it.” I think his being like an artistic prodigy is an example of the book maybe slightly falling into that trap.

James Walton:

Even the level of his perceptiveness there.

Jo Hamya:

No, I think he’s earned it by that point.

James Walton:

Okay. Well, let’s move on to what he’s perceiving there because I think, if that’s all right with you, which is pretty much at the heart of the book is the relationship between Wash and Tich, not just that, and the question of the white saviour business.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah.

James Walton:

Now, I believe that when she first wrote the book, she sent it round to friends and early readers and they said, “Look, this is a bit white saviory now.” I think in the final book you can see her wrestling with that question. I think not always satisfactory. I don’t know where you stand on this. Because basically it stuck with the fact that in some way Tich did save him most literally from death and gave him a new life. There’s the one bit where Wash is quite accurately saying, “I had never been as equal to him. Perhaps any acceptance of equality was impossible. He saw only those who were there to be saved and those who did the saving.” But this is controversial stuff, Jo, and don’t get us cancelled. But the whole-

Jo Hamya:

Get you cancelled.

James Walton:

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. [inaudible 00:15:39] some other co-host. But in that time and place is Tich wrong to think that? There’s two words to the white saviour. There’s white and there’s also saviour. The whole of the first section is showing just how powerless and how they are completely deprived of agency, the enslaved people in the plantation, of course. Then Tich comes along and admittedly only one [inaudible 00:16:02], but takes them away in a hot air blue into a new life from almost certain death. What I can’t quite tell is whether the author is acknowledging the ambiguity of the white saviour stuff or basically tangling herself a bit in knots.

Jo Hamya:

I definitely think it’s an interesting question. I think there’s an argument to be made that in Wash’s experience kindness is relative to a really horrifying existence. The fact that Tich allows him to eat at the same table, wash, sleep on a mattress with bedding and look at some books. If you said that just out of context, that would not be a sort of… Anyone would go, “Of course, well, this is basic human decency. Isn’t it?” I think the fact is that Tich is an incredibly selfish character for all of this novel. I think his kindness is relative to Erasmus, his brother’s, cruelty. But then equally when he-

James Walton:

He’s kinder than that. But I’ll certainly take some qualification [inaudible 00:17:23]-

Jo Hamya:

Sure. He’s much kinder than Erasmus, but then I think he is basically just-

James Walton:

He’s much kinder [inaudible 00:17:28] just kinder than Erasmus.

Jo Hamya:

He’s decent. But next to a Erasmus, he looks like a saint, doesn’t he? I think that there’s a bit where Tanna says quite explicitly, “All the while that he was clothing you, feeding you, et cetera, he was still using slaves. Tracking them up and down a mountain with very heavy instruments and materials to build his so-called cloud cutter/hot air balloon. Treating them no better than his brother treated the rest of the plantation.” I think that’s fair. Then there’s that bit where, I don’t know if this is a spoiler alert or not, but he quite literally leaves Wash in the middle of a storm in the Arctic, uncertain of whether Wash will live or die. Even though he insists, “I knew my father and his assistant Peter would be there to save you.” When Peter and Tich’s father find Wash, they go, “Well, one more hour and you would’ve been dead.” But Tich doesn’t really care about that. I think he’s a fundamentally selfish man and that doesn’t stop… His kindness is extended whenever it’s in line with his own motives, if that makes sense.

James Walton:

No, I think he is an ambiguous character. I’m obviously not putting him forward as any [inaudible 00:18:46]. There’s a really nice little bit that sums it up I think. There’s one bit where Wash is… Well, they’re both climbing the hill where the hot air balloon is being worked on at this point and Wash falls. He is worried that Tich will think he’s broken the equipment, and so he says, “Nothing is broken, I said anxious, holding up the Vasculum that he might see. It is your bones I’m more concerned about, Tich crouched beside me, slapping the dust from my shoulders.” That’s a kindly thing to say. Then he says, “There are less painful ways to test Newton’s second law.” He’s making little joke that he knows Wash can’t possibly understand. There’s always a patronising element to his kindness. Another thing I think is quite crucial that eventually Wash spots is that his objection to slavery is really that it’s a stain on the white race. It’s a moral stain on the white race, which admittedly it is, but [inaudible 00:19:41]-

Jo Hamya:

Actually, it’s all about me.

James Walton:

Yeah, exactly. It’s exactly that. It is all about him. I think this makes Tich a really possibly more interesting character. They’re both pretty interesting. The relationship between is-

Jo Hamya:

Well, yeah. He is sort of-

James Walton:

Yeah. They’re constantly changing.

Jo Hamya:

If we’re going to talk about Washington Black in relation to This Other Eden, I think one of the most interesting characters in This Other Eden was Matthew Diamond, who is also that white saviour archetype who actually quite genuinely is racist. Out-and-out says, “I do feel disgusted by the sight of these non-white, Black, indigenous people.

James Walton:

That’s right, “But it’s not going to stop me doing my duty.”

Jo Hamya:

Exactly. I think whilst Tich isn’t that-

James Walton:

That’s interesting.

Jo Hamya:

… bad, he’s still inherently… What would we call it? I guess with 21st century language, he has his unconscious biases that he can’t get rid of. They are-

James Walton:

Yes. But that’s slightly different from Matthew Diamond in a way because he has got conscious biases. He knows, “I really don’t like Black people, but my Christian duty is to help them.” Whereas-

Jo Hamya:

Whereas Tich is like, “I’m God’s gift to Earth, man.”

James Walton:

I love [inaudible 00:20:51]-

Jo Hamya:

“I’m really helping these people.”

James Walton:

But he does say at one point to Wash, “I tried to be kind.” I think I believe him, but possibly tried and failed, but did save him in the most literal sense.

Jo Hamya:

Well, but this is another… This is a huge point of the book is how free are any of these characters? Most particularly characters like Wash or Big Kit, his mother figure, or Emily. Essentially those who work on the plantation. But also to some extent the brothers and the story or John Willard, the assassin, how free are any of them?

James Walton:

But how free are, in a way, any of us? Right at the start Washington says, the Big Kit, his mother figure, “What is it like, Kit, free? I felt a shift in the dirt and then she was gathering me in close, her hot breath in my ear. Oh, child. It is like nothing in this world. When you are free, you can do anything. You can go wherever it is you are wanting. You wake up anytime you’re wanting. When you’re free, she whispered, someone asks you a question, you ain’t got to answer. You ain’t got to finish no job you don’t want to finish. You just leave it.” Now, I think that’s not definition of freedom as much as being really, really rich and possibly childless. Because on the whole, none of us… I certainly can’t do any of those things.

Jo Hamya:

I can.

James Walton:

You freelance 20 somethings. But I can’t finish a job I don’t want to finish. I can’t go wherever I want. I can’t wake up any time I want.

Jo Hamya:

Well, no. Actually, I’m not trying to speak glib.

James Walton:

I’m not suggesting I’m in the situation of… Can I make this perfectly clear? Barbadian slaves [inaudible 00:22:38]-

Jo Hamya:

No, James. You have not worked on a plantation.

James Walton:

… 1830 [inaudible 00:22:40]. No, obviously not that. It is the point that that definition of freedom I think is-

Jo Hamya:

It’s a very idealistic one. Yeah.

James Walton:

… a bit silly.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. Well, no, I don’t think necessarily silly. But I take your point in the sense that there’s this very interesting and tense scene where Erasmus and Tich hear from their cousin Philip that their father is dead. Philip says, “Well, Erasmus, your mum wants you back in London to wrap up affairs at home and deal with the household for a bit. Tich, you are going to have to take over the plantation for two or three years while he’s off doing that.” Erasmus can’t wait to get back to London. Tich has no desire at all to be a slave driver.

There’s this standoff where Erasmus can’t go to London unless Tich agrees to take over the plantation. Meanwhile, Tich doesn’t want to take over the plantation, but can’t in all good conscience say no to his mother who’s newly widowed. There’s this standoff of desires, and they’re definitely not legal freedoms. But as you say, who is truly free of any responsibility? I’m not going to use the word master here because it’s in bad taste, but whether you’re beholden to your family or to the money that you need to make your life work, et cetera. That being said, I think what Wash achieves… I think he does achieve an agency of spirit and mind, certainly.

James Walton:

[inaudible 00:24:17].

Jo Hamya:

But I think by the end, he’s ready to… Talk about this whole white saviour narrative, by the end I think he’s very ready to cast Tich off once they have their final conversation

James Walton:

Yeah. That winning of as far as he gets. I don’t think the idea is that he’s meant to end up, he’s cracked it. It’s a journey towards greater freedom. He does have a journey towards greater freedom [inaudible 00:24:41] actually reach there. But then as I say, in a way, which of us ever does? But it’s not glibly earned that either, is it?

Jo Hamya:

No.

James Walton:

It’s really good.

Jo Hamya:

Actually, do you know in so far as Big Kit’s statement of, “You can say no to whatever you want to,” I think she’s talking in much more granular detail than any of us would ever think to meditate on. As in, if I want to sleep in an extra five minutes I can, whereas she can’t. If I want to take shade from the sun that’s burning my neck while I work for half an hour, I can. She can’t.

James Walton:

Yeah. Okay. Jo, I don’t want to drop you in it. But when we were having our preliminary discussion, at one point you suggested that maybe the book was in the end too nice. You look as if you wish I hadn’t brought that up. Is that because you don’t think it anymore or because you don’t want to think it or you don’t want to say it?

Jo Hamya:

I’m gradually in the process of changing my mind on that, which is why I’m glowering at you from across the table for bringing it up.

James Walton:

Listeners, it’s quite a scary glower.

Jo Hamya:

Thank you very much. I practise in the mirror. I don’t know, I think it hit me that this might be a really niche part of our audience. But for anyone who’s read their Frantz Fanon, there’s this thing he says where a cycle of violence more often than not can only be broken with well-harnessed use of violence, and that’s why sometimes physical conflict is a necessity and geopolitical conflict is a necessity. I had wondered on our phone call whether Wash’s liberation and path to freedom is maybe a bit too sort of… Not that it doesn’t contain its own hardships, but the one act of violence that he commits, which is he gets into a-

James Walton:

We probably shouldn’t give that away.

Jo Hamya:

Okay. We won’t spoil it.

James Walton:

[inaudible 00:26:46].

Jo Hamya:

The one act of violence that he commits, he does end up saying, “I stopped myself from going any further with it. I only wounded the person that I wounded so far because my own moral spiritual self wouldn’t have been able to keep on existing afterwards.” Not to say that Wash doesn’t endure terrible acts of brutality and cruelty on his person, but the way in which he is liberated is very much through a love, care, attention being given to him by whichever willing stranger happens to pass by.

James Walton:

And his own brilliance. I do find moderately implausible is his invention of the modern aquarium. He works out exactly what glass is needed and what metal is needed and how you can keep sea creatures alive rather than exhibiting dead.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. In all fairness, he is never properly credited for that. But I guess what I’m taking for a walk in my head… I’m really fond of this phrase since you gave it to me.

James Walton:

[inaudible 00:27:53] taking a thought for a walk.

Jo Hamya:

Mm-hmm. Is whether it’s not necessarily, well, maybe realistic that this boy should have managed to attain the level of bodily and intellectual autonomy that he does by the end of the novel with absolutely zero blood on his hands. Part of me thinks that I’m being jaded or else I have a incorrect impulse on that. Then the other part of me, the part of me that reads Frantz Fanon, thinks, well, I think maybe it is a bit willfully idealistic to say that he just bumbles around from place to place depending on the kindness of strangers as a disfigured Black boy in the 19th century without ever needing to actually physically defend himself except for that one time on the street.

James Walton:

There’s one time where a friend does it on his behalf as well, I suppose. Just for people who don’t know who Frantz Fanon is, can I try and say who he is?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. Go on.

James Walton:

Tell me how vastly wrong this is. Martinique born French Francophone writer who is actually astonishing and influential now because he is the architect of decolonization and [inaudible 00:29:16]-

Jo Hamya:

Along with Grison, I would say. Edward Grison.

James Walton:

Well, actually what you’ve just said then makes me want to ask one last question, which is maybe too massive for this stage. You said in a book that’s realistic, in the end is this a book that’s meant to be a work of realism or of slight mythology? I could never quite work that out.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. See, I’m thinking this too because my earlier comparison to The Amber Spyglass suggests that it’s utterly fantastical, but it is… I know that-

James Walton:

But it is partly fantastical. Isn’t it?

Jo Hamya:

Well, I know that Esi Edugyan’s initial inspiration for this was The Tichborne Claimant, which in the end actually this year Zadie Smith has written about in The Fraud. Funnily enough. Maybe these are good companion novels to have side by side if you want a bit of historical fiction to tee you up.

James Walton:

That allows me to get something off my chest-

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. Go on.

James Walton:

… which you might find deeply tedious. The fact that he’s called Tich because he’s small is I think one of the books… There are some anachronisms in it. Tich meaning small came from Little Tich, who was a musical performer in the 1880s. He was called Little Tich because he looked like the Tichborne Claimant. That’s where it’s from. So to call someone Tich for being small in the 1830s, gross anachronism, Jo. I can see you share my outrage with that.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah.

James Walton:

On that fascinating note, I don’t think it invalidates the book, obviously. But I wish some editor might’ve spotted that. But anyway, that’s by the by.

Jo Hamya:

Is a Serpent’s Tail. Get it together Serpent’s Tail.

James Walton:

Yeah. Get it together, Serpent’s Tail.

Jo Hamya:

James, who would you recommend Washington Black to?

James Walton:

As you know Jo, I always find this question quite a hard one. Because on the whole, if you like a book, you recommend it to everyone. If you don’t-

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, you do.

James Walton:

… you don’t recommend it to anyone. On those grounds, it is a romping… Well, it’s a strange book. It’s a romping read on the one hand, it’s a slave narrative on the other. It’s how many hands are we allowed? It’s traditionally only two, isn’t it? Let me drop the whole hands business. But it also has a lot of interesting things to say about racial issues then and definitely now, and that’s all intended. If you don’t… I don’t know. If you like a good book, read it. If you don’t mind a mishmash of a style… If you want an absolutely straightforward, coherent, own narrative, then you probably should steer clear. But then who does, really? This is just the book that it is and it’s great.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah.

James Walton:

Well, it’s pretty good. This is the book that it is and it’s very good.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. This is maybe a slightly lazy or obvious comparison, but if you like your Tony Morrison, probably like this.

James Walton:

Yeah.

Jo Hamya:

Actually, I think people who enjoyed George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo might enjoy this because it is that kind of… You take something slightly based in fact and you make it a bit weird. Saunders has his ghosts and Edugyan has her cloud cutters and Arctic explorers.

James Walton:

Okay, let me try and take… Let me be a bit less negative about the whole who would you recommend it to and say that, oddly enough, if you enjoyed Any Human Heart by William Boyd, which is basically the author throwing in lots of things they’re interested in.

Jo Hamya:

I still think that the marine biology makes sense because he’s looking at animals and he’s caging or trapping these octopi, octopedes, who knows? Octopodes. What’s the plural?

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:32:49].

Jo Hamya:

Octopi. Is it? I’m sure someone’s going to tell me that’s wrong.

James Walton:

No because in the book it suggests Tanner… I thought it was always thought it was octopi. She tells him off because she says it’s octopedes and you are confusing your Greek and you are Latin. But anyway-

Jo Hamya:

Anyway, that he’s trapping all these marine creatures to show them off in an aquarium in London, and then one of the octopi start dying. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of stuff that maybe on first read I found a bit random, but there is a thread that connects all of it.

James Walton:

There’s a certain freedom thing. I never thought of that Jo. That’s true about the aquarium. It never fits the Arctic bit, but-

Jo Hamya:

Oh, God. I think we’re out of time on this podcast, so we can’t do a whole digression on the Arctic. But yes, warmly recommend to all.

James Walton:

Yeah. It’s a good old read.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah.

James Walton:

That’s it for this week.

Jo Hamya:

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Substack at the Booker Prizes, and join our book group on Facebook. Till next time, bye.

James Walton:

Bye.

Jo Hamya:

The Booker Prize Podcast is hosted by me, Jo Hamya, and by James Walton. It’s produced and edited by Kevin Muyolo, and the executive producer is John Davenport. It’s a Daddy’s SuperYacht production for the Booker Prizes.