Interview with A T Balsara, author of The Great and the Small

 

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview A T Balsara, whose novel The Great and the Small had its debut on September 3^rd.

Where did the original idea for The Great and the Small come from?

First, let me say thank you for having me on your blog. Your questions go well beneath the surface, and I hope I can do them justice! The idea for The Great & the Small came to me over 20 years ago. I had been looking for a way to explore questions of good and evil that I’d had ever since I’d visited a concentration camp museum in Dachau, Germany, when I was around 10 years old.

I had always been fascinated by the ancient plague and had wondered what it would have been like to live in Europe at a time when half the population was suddenly wiped out. I’d loved Richard Adam’s book Watership Down, about a warren of rabbits in search of a new home. There was so much detail, culture and mythology woven into its telling that by the end of the book, I felt like I’d glimpsed life from a completely new perspective. As I searched for a way to explore themes like the cost of blind obedience, it dawned on me that sentient rats who carry the plague as a biological weapon would be the perfect lens to look through. I modelled the tunnel colony on Stalinist Russia, and added culture and mythology, to make it feel real. To help research rat behaviour, I got a sweet little dumbo rat that I named Frodo, and he became my guide into the strange world of rats.

The protagonists are a teenage girl called Ananda and a young rat called Fin, who belongs to a totalitarian rat colony. Both characters are outcasts in their way. Who are they and how do they meet?

Both feel that somehow, they don’t belong. Ananda has a deeply intuitive spirit and can communicate with animals. She also has a secret buried so deep within her subconscious—a traumatic event so horrible and shaming that she has hidden it even from herself. The buried trauma comes out in her dreams, and manifests in her conflicting desire to rise above her pain or end her life.

Fin is the scrawny nephew of the rat colony’s charismatic “Beloved Chairman.” Orphaned as a pup, Fin lives in the shadow of his charismatic uncle, and tries to prove himself. Defying tunnel law, Fin ventures into a local market during daylight hours, to taunt the “ugly two-legs” but instead almost gets crushed by a fish monger. Ananda saves him, and as she crouches over Fin’s prone body in the market, they share a moment of understanding. Neither can know that their stories will be inextricably linked going forward.

This is a YA novel that deals with themes of dictatorship, freedom of speech, PTSD and abuse. Why was it important to you to write about such serious issues?

Writing and art are my ways of understanding the world and myself. The issues presented in this book are ones I have personally grappled with for almost my entire life. It became clear to me in the years after I went through the concentration camp museum, that the evil that was done there was done because of choices people made. Choice after choice had been made, not just by Hitler, but by his surrounding henchmen, allowing them to go forward with their monstrosity of hatred and prejudice. In The Great & the Small, I decided to write about Stalin, because in the west he and his own band of henchman had gotten off the hook for what they perpetrated. I wanted to shine a light on what they had done, so that I could understand how someone goes from an innocent baby to a full-blown monster.

I didn’t know it at the time I went through the museum, but I was carrying my own burden of buried trauma. I had been molested as a child by a trusted family friend and told I was to blame. The shock and horror of “what I had done,” drove the memory deep inside, only accessed through nightmares and acting out behaviours. The questions from the concentration camp became so important to me because it felt personal. I felt evil. I thought I had caused a grown man to commit a horrible act. I needed to know how to not be evil and hoped against hope that I could be more than that. It’s only years later that I understand why questions of good and evil haunted me.

How far is The Great and the Small based on personal experience?

All of the emotions and the horror of living with buried trauma are straight from my lived experience. I fictionalized details to fit with Ananda and the pre-existing story. I extracted the feelings, and many actual events, and poured them into a new container.

You have spoken of your experience of trauma and how you used energy healing to recover. What can you tell us about that and how important is it to the story?

It’s funny how much I’ve changed and healed since the first edition came out. I would have never dreamed I would be involved in energy medicine and probably would have discounted it. But when I found it and tried a few exercises, it made a huge, immediate impact on me that was undeniable.

As I healed, I realized that I had always been able to “see” energy—I just hadn’t known what I was seeing. I had disassociated from my body as a result from the trauma—which I write about in the book—to the point where I felt like a marionette. From the neck down, I felt nothing, as if my body was a sock attached to my neck. Slowly, with energy medicine, I “wove” my body and spirit back together, like Peter Pan who must sew his shadow back onto his toe. I am still in the process of reinhabiting my body, but it is better every day and I am so grateful for it.

I wouldn’t have been able to write Ananda’s story as I did, if I hadn’t healed myself. It had been too raw, and I had no objectivity as in 2017 I was still deep in the trenches of PTSD. In that way, energy medicine greatly impacted the book. I didn’t specifically add much energy medicine to the story, though, except to make Ananda very intuitive. She is able to get “nudges” from creatures and can sense what they are feeling.

Amongst others, The Great and the Small has been compared with George Orwell’s political fable, Animal Farm. What do you think of that?

I’m flattered by comparisons to Animal Farm, as it's a classic that addresses the dangers of authoritarianism. However, I found Animal Farm challenging to read due to its stark depiction of violence and lack of hope. While its portrayal of a brutal regime is brilliant, I struggled with its unrelenting bleakness and distant, cipher-like characters. In contrast, The Great & the Small explores themes of authoritarianism, there is still a sense of hope.

You also write and illustrate picture books for children. What are the challenges of writing for a YA audience, and why did you choose to illustrate The Great and the Small?

I switch into a different gear when I’m writing YA. I’m able to go deeper and darker than I can with writing for children. The challenge in writing YA is that there are certain things I don’t want to write about. I don’t want to write about gratuitous violence, sex, or stories that are pessimistic or cynical in their view of the future. I have no time for stories without hope, but there is an appetite for nihilistic kinds of stories. My writing will probably not appeal to those readers, but I can only write what I feel strongly about.

I illustrated it because it’s another aspect of storytelling for me. It’s a way to look at the story from different angles. It’s not the norm for YA to have illustrations, but I remember loving illustrated books when I was a teen. I figured if graphic novels are so popular, teens would probably enjoy an illustrated novel. I have no idea why there aren’t more of them, but I suspect it has to do with publishers and budgets, not the readers.

This is a new version of the award-winning first edition, published in 2017. What made you return to the story?

In the first edition, Ananda’s story felt a little more forced. I had given her strong reactions, but hadn’t added the backstory that would explain why she was so withdrawn, and why she pushed people away. When the opportunity was offered to me to revise the story for a second edition, I added in my own backstory of living with buried trauma to give Ananda that depth of character she needed.

What do you want your readers to take away from the book?

I want them to consider that the issues and even traumas that they may be going through are all part of the journey toward becoming their true selves. To be fearless in the pursuit of truth.

Why did you choose the idea of the rat colony to reflect on human intolerance and brutality in its various forms?

Mostly because it was fascinating to me to explore themes of prejudice through the eyes of rats. I got to transpose the events that we see going on around us—the manipulation of the press, the double-speak, the demagoguery—and reframe it. Sometimes, what’s old becomes new again when shone through a new lens. It helps to see, in all its starkness, what we may have become blind to.

What is the meaning of the Hero’s Journey and why do you invoke it?

The Hero’s Journey in literature has several steps to it, but what has always stuck with me, though, is the idea that the hero must undergo trials that test him or her to the limit. They endure a “dark night of the soul” in which all hope appears lost, only to emerge stronger and wiser than before. It is the story we love to watch on TV and read in books, but which we dread undergoing ourselves. The Hero’s Journey in real life is a painful, repeating cycle of crisis followed by victory. It’s the ebb and flow of growth, and when we apply the Hero’s Journey to our own lives, and our own “trials,” suddenly there is hope. We can recognize that these trials carry within them the seeds of wisdom that we can’t attain any other way. That’s why the people who have suffered most in the world are often the greatest. They have reaped the secret harvest of suffering and have risen above, because they heeded “the call” of the journey and heroically persevered.

You have mentioned the importance of your Baha’i faith. Tell us about that and its significance to the book and beyond.

One of the tenets of the Baha’i Faith is that every person has the right, and the responsibility, to seek truth. We are called to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears. I believe we are given whatever gifts and talents we have—and we all have them—to work towards the betterment of the world. If we look around and see a world disintegrating into hatred and division, we must, all the more, rise up with love. Light is the only thing that conquers darkness. 

The Baha’i teachings say, “If a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love.” It is empowering, even as it is humbling. We are the ones who change the world. Each one of us. By our thoughts, our actions, and our choices. No one is going to swoop in and save us. But the shift is already happening. More and more people are fed up with the trajectory our current world culture is on. More people are recognizing the need to live in harmony, not just with the earth, but with each other. That’s why I have such hope for the future. I believe that while we seem to be heading for disaster, we are collectively waking up to the reality that we must work together if we are to survive. It is a classic “Hero’s Journey” call to action, and we must—individually and collectively—answer the call.

Thank you again for having me on your blog!

Thank you! (Speculative Fiction Showcase)

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About A T Balsara:

A.T. Balsara is an award-winning children's and young adult author/illustrator, motivational speaker, and energy medicine practitioner. Her passion is to inspire joy through storytelling and energy healing, helping young people and adults to walk “the Hero’s Journey” in real life. She writes and illustrates for young children under her full name, Andrea Torrey Balsara, and for young adults under A.T. Balsara.

Andrea is also a painter, an avid amateur explorer of quantum physics, and a keen environmentalist. She advocates for the humane treatment of animals and regularly volunteers at a donkey sanctuary where she uses energy medicine to help previously neglected and abused animals regain their health and vitality.

To learn more about her and sign up for her newsletter, visit: www.torreybalsara.com

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