July 13, 2026 • 49 mins
Arvind is an Olivier nominated playwright who also writes novels and television. His seven graphic novels include the official adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s "Trouble Is My Business" and the Bram Stoker Award–nominated "Darkness Visible" with Mike Carey. Arvind has also written multiple chart-topping audio originals, including the science fiction anthology series "Earworms", "The Crimes of Dorian Gray", and the nonfiction audiobook "Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth."In theatre, Arvind has created adaptations of the Douglas Adams novels "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" and "Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency" (co-written with James Goss) as well as the children's musical "The Boy With Wings", based on Sir Lenny Henry’s children’s books, for which he received an Olivier nomination. He was also a lead producer of the Grammy and Tony Award–winning Alanis Morissette musical "Jagged Little Pill".Arvind has written and produced extensively in television, including "Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency" for AMC/Netflix, "Anansi Boys" for Amazon, and the Asian Academy Award winner "The Garden of Evening Mists" for HBO.His debut prose novel "The Great Game" is published by Thomas & Mercer in July 2026.Follow Arvind @ArvD on BlueSky and @arvind.david on Instagram.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You know, we're gonna showcase a really new good book.
But also the author is fascinating too, So it's one
of a few times I have both going on at
the same time. And this guy is he's busy doing
all kinds and has his hands and all kinds of
parts of the business.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So I'm happy to have it with me here today.
And he has a three D.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
He's a three name person like me, Like lot three
name people we like like that. Also, Uh, he's a
writer and a producer. He's done Broadway, he's done television,
he's done films, he's done You're done comics, also correct comics,
He's done that. Like he's his hands have touched various
(00:48):
various areas of the industry, which I just love that completely.
He has a new book, The Great Game. It's a thriller,
and I'm gonna read a couple extracts from it with
his permission, trying to use my voice. I was trying
to lubricate my voice to get ready for it and
do that. Uh. And I just you know, and I
want to find out from you know, from where he
comes from, where he is raised, where he is now,
(01:10):
and all this kind of comes together and of course
about the book help me. Welcome arvind Ethan David.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hello, Jia, it's great to be here. Thank you for
that introduction. I will try and live up to it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, you know, you don't have to try, you are
doing it. And I just firstly, I have to ask
you to ask people just a question, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Today's a good day. Two day is a good day.
It started early. I have a seven year old daughter,
those those of your listeners who have young children know
that no day doesn't start early. But she is currently
in the park with her art teacher, drawing passing dogs.
So so at any moment in this podcast, they could
(01:53):
come in with paintings of dogs or possibly actual dogs
that they have brought home. So just the and if
you hear barking, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
We are jail j media. We love dogs and I
rescue dogs. I have all my dogs are rescues. We're big.
You know, it makes you. The fans like animals too.
They just like to like to see the animal. So
if a dog comes through, you know, we're good. Except
that you like that, it's very good, very I you know,
I have. It was Mother's Day of course for you,
(02:24):
as we're recording a few days ago and my birthday
actually it was my birthday and Mother's day.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Healthy birthday, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So it's kind of crazy. I'm heading towards sixty, so
it's kind of very interesting. And uh, but my kids,
my daughters are grown and I'm a grandfather. I have
a grandkids, so it's it's been fun having them as
we're all kind of aging together.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I appreciate them.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What is one thing you hope your seven year old
daughter will keep throughout her life?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The joy of play? I think that's the thing we
all give up too soon, and we almost give it
up like a virtue. We go now it is time
to lay aside the childish things like play. Play is
the whole thing. If you're not playing, what are you
doing with your life? I joke I'm in the middle
(03:13):
of finishing a new play and I write for theater
quite a lot as well, and everybody goes, what are
you doing? I'm like, I am playing all day. It's
literally in the title, I am making a thing off play.
And it's not an accident that our oldest live art
(03:34):
form is called play because that's what our ancestors did.
They got together and they had fun, and at some
point some of them started the audience and some of
them got up and got paid for it. But it
started as play.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You know, I've never heard I've never heard it said
that way, and you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I like that. I'm gonna take that with me. I
would take that with me. I like that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Oh it's call play. It's called play. That's that's what
you do. You I've interviewed older celebrities over the years,
over the years, and the one through line, I'll say,
and these are ones who are still working and they're
like in their seventies, eighties, nineties, whatever, And I was
asking what keeps you going? And they say, I still
remember me as a little kid. I'll stayed on some
(04:19):
various forum, right.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I think that's so true. You look at you know,
we were talking about this a couple of nights ago.
I'm of the age that my parents and my friend's
parents are all in their eighties now, and some of
them are like winding down physically and mentally and socially,
and it's sad. And some of them are still playing.
(04:46):
And you look at John Lithgo, you look at Ian McKellen,
You look at these people who are in their eighties,
and Larry David Jerry Seinfeld is seventh. For God's sake, right,
it's about the attitude. Of course, you have to be
lucky in your genetics and your health and all of that.
(05:08):
That is not nothing, but all things being equal, it's
the people who keep having fun who keep going longest.
And I want to keep going. Then my daughter's seven.
I can't. I can't stop, she said to me. To
she said to me recently, she said, Daddy, I think
you should live for another fifty one years. And I'm
(05:30):
I'm fifty one. So she was She's like, I would
like you to have as much again. And I'm like, okay,
I'm good with that. I'm good of that if you are.
So that's the goal.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I'm fifty seven ahead of you and I And that's
that's really cute.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I know that. Like Dame j D.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Dench that stage and she's like eighties. Well look at
Harrison Ford. He's like three different shows. It is eighties.
Like it's just it's it is amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Curiosity, which is also a childlike trade, we don't lose curiosity.
Keep going curious. Now, doubt the statistic that people retire
die within five years. A lot of times they have
nothing for once they stop, it's kind of like, okay,
so they say, actually keep going. I just keep doing
whatever it is you want to do. I mean, you
(06:24):
you have choices later when you get older, probably more
than when you're younger. Keep going as long as long
as you can keep going yourself to death. But I
just keep going, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Doing what do we hear? I mean, I think we
all step to ask what are we here? Four? And
if you have a half decent answer to that question,
keep doing it. Because if you have a reason to
be here, then you decide to stop doing your reason
for being here, then you're in trouble because then there's
no then you have no reason to be here. Then
(06:53):
you will stop. You will stop being here.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Also, like I know, I was, is that you work
to like pace sixty five whatever, so you were, and
then you retire and then you just like travel the
world or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I was like, why is that necessarily the thing to do? Like?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I don't maybe, I like you said, maybe I like
my job. I mean when we can travel earlier, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, No, I'm my parents both love My mother's an academic.
She's just touching eighty and she's still teaching and lecturing
and traveling and publishing. So no, my family model, my
dad similarly is still pretty active. And so now my
family model is you work his life and make if
(07:36):
you're lucky, you find something you love. And of course
the danger is right, I mean we could be sounding
like workaholics. Yeah, you build your family. You build your
family into it, you build your friendships into it, you
build your travel into it. I mean, you know, we
are in a unique privilege, right, This is not real work.
We do not We do not like you know, build
(07:57):
roads or dig ditches or or you know, even drive trucks.
Like we got to make ship up for a living.
We get to hang out with our friends and tell
stories and we get paid for it. Like and sometimes
we get to do that in exotic locations and interesting places.
Then we get to travel around the world talking about
(08:19):
the stories we made. This is ridiculous. This is this
is not something anyone should ever want to stop doing.
The times that I meet writers and they complain about
the business of being a writer, I'm like, stop, dude,
no one's holding a gun to your head. Stop if
it's not making you happy. Go try a real jaw
(08:39):
for six months and then see.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I think, are you my twin? I feel like you're
saying something like here, I say all the time. Oh
my god, I agree. I agree with everything you just said.
You know, because it's it's fine because first of all,
it's easy to complain, right, people complain. But there were
two right, It's like I actually have had real I
was a nurse for fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I worked at Insuran. I've had real jobs. Hated them.
Ye jobs, this is fun.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Me too. I was a corporate lawyer that sucks. I've
run a bunch of production companies that was okay at
least I was, you know, making stuff, and I was
adjacent to writers. But no, this is better. Actually, just
the page in me better.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yes, I agree with you. Now you come from I
mean from around the world. I mean you know, I
think you were. You were born in Malaysia, grew up
in uh in London? Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
In England? Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah? Pretty much? Pretty much. Yeah, I was born in Malaysia.
My parents are ethnically Indian. My mother is a Midnight's child,
so she arrived in Malaysia. Is a little baby in
July nineteen forty seven with her homeland on fire as
a refugee. My father's third or fourth generation, so but
(09:58):
they were global, so I was, you know, I was
counted around the world as a little baby because my
mom is an academic and my and my dad was
an academic and then became a corporate guy. So yeah,
I grew up Malaysia, Singapore, the UK primarily. But since
then I've lived in New York and in California. I'm
(10:20):
currently talking to you from Boulder, Colorado, where I particular
little writing sabbatical. Uh So, yeah, I get around, but
Asia and and the UK and America sort of my
my triangle of my triangle of sadness and my triangle
of joy.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I like that idea. I like you said to you that,
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Well, it's good on you. Like you're you're looking at
your looking great. So you're doing fine with that. We're
go'll get to a book. I scarified, But I just
want to give a little context to who he is,
because I mean, that's that's how I thing we pour
into our books are part of us. So I said,
you've done Broadway television, You've done film. When I say Brahwai.
You also done music halls and part of them, especially
(11:05):
Jagged Little Hill, which I.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Saw, Actually, oh thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I loved I thought it was very unique and the
way they took your songs. I love the whole thing
and stuff. I just know if you, because you just
said you were a lawyer, you did corporate, how did you?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
For me?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It was quitting all that cold turkey at forty and
then starting a holy life so last I said that
was twenty years when doing it? For you, how did
that transition go from that real job so to speak,
to real job or eel, how that go there?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It was less cold turkey for me. It was more
sort of dual tracking because I had I did a
lot of theater and a lot of writing and a
lot of performing and directing at university, and I always
knew that was what I wanted to do, but you know,
real life gets in the way. I needed to earn
a living. Actually, for me, it was a very practical thing.
(11:59):
I needed a passport. I didn't have a British passport.
I certainly didn't have an American passport, and I knew
those were places I needed to work if I was
to be a writer and a storyteller. But you know,
little theater companies don't tend to do your visa applications
or you know, there's no publisher who says, all right,
(12:21):
I'll sponsor your passport application. There's no that's not a thing.
So do you know who sponsors visa applications and passport applications?
Law firms. Law firms are really good in it. They
have whole departments. So I went to law school and
started as an attorney, and bless them, they sponsored my
(12:45):
visa and kept me in the country until I could
get a passport. And the day I did, I walked
into the senior partner's office and I went, I think
I'm good, and bless her. She wasn't surprised, and she said,
I think that's a good decision, which which sounds like
I was a terrible lawyer. I don't think I was.
(13:06):
I think I was fine. But she said, and she said,
she said, she said, listen, if you stick around here,
you know, you might end up as a partner in
seven or eight years and that would be great, but
you will be bored. And I went, I'm bored now.
So she's like, you should you should go. So that
was very plice of them. And then I was very
(13:28):
lucky a client, a client said to me, took me
out to lunch. Wonderful gentleman called Tim Mayer, who founded
a company called kettle Wisps, if you've ever had those.
So Tim invented the luxury chit category. It didn't exist
before coming Priss and Tim invented that company and ran
it and then sold it very successfully. And he had
(13:51):
been a client and he took me out for lunch
when he heard I was quitting, and he said, what
do you want to do next? And I said, well,
I think I want to have a theater company and
make plays and make stuff. And he went, all right,
write a business plan and we'll vack you. And so
that was the start of my storytelling sort of my
professional storytelling life. I had done stuff as a student.
(14:14):
I had done stuff as a sort of on the
on the fringe, you know, on the fringe of London
and in the fringes. But that was the start of
me professionally. But I started as a producer because you know,
somebody had written the check and I was responsible for
that money. So I wasn't driving. I wasn't writing the stories.
I was producing them. But we made a bunch of theater,
(14:35):
we made a bunch of animation internet stuff, and that
got me going. And that sort of just kept happening
for most of the next fifteen years, and I was
producing other people's stuff, and I was very lucky. I
got to work with extraordinary writers. I worked with Tom
Stoppard and Diablo Cody, who I made Jog a Little
(14:57):
Pill with, and Max Landers and David Bidil and Simon
Rich and I worked with all these amazing writers, really,
you know, the greatest writers, some of the greatest writers
in the world. And I got to sit next to
them as they were writing, and I got to give
them ridiculously though it was. I got to give them notes,
and I got to understand their process and help them
(15:19):
tell their stories. And over the years they would say,
you know, you should do this writing thing. You're quite
good at it. Why don't you do this yourself? And
so I so gradually I started to and I started
in sudden in graphic novels actually, and now I think
I've written seven graphic novels over the years. And then
(15:44):
one of them got optioned for television and then I
found myself writing a television pilot and that led to
the next television gig, and that led to the next
television gig, and that just started taking over. And I
guess for me, the big turning point was the pandemic
when I had a lot of producing happening in January
(16:08):
and February twenty twenty. Yes, and I had a lot
of I had a show on Broadway, I had a
TV show and production, I had a movie in production.
And then it was March eleventh and I had nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
That remember, Is that crazy? Oh my god, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And so with a whole lot of nothing, And of
course there was a lot of work to try and
take care of the actors and crews and keep the
companies together, and lots of fun time doing applications for
government grants and insurance and all this stuff. But my
creative life came to an abrupt hot, right. I had
(16:46):
all this production, all this creative producing, and it stopped.
And I remember sus saying to my then wife, just
saying to her, I don't think I can do it again.
I got it, just you know, I don't think I
could just come out of this and do the same
thing again. I feel like I've done it. I've done it.
I was lucky I got to do it to a
(17:07):
pretty high level. You know. Jagged Little Pillow was my
sort of swan song as a lead producer, and I
the show won the Grammy and the Tony and you know,
we did well. And then I was like, I think,
next time I do this, I need to be the
one writing the story myself. And so that started, and
(17:28):
here we are, I guess five years six years after that,
and I've had some plays on and been nominated for
some awards, and now we're here to talk about my
first novel, The Great Game.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's it's amazing. You just said that. I think I
had PTSC when you mentioned the pandemic. I remember for
me it was it was March eighteenth, twenty twenty. I
was working for a couple of networks. They shut down.
I was like living in La. Everything shout in La.
We had this whole kind of curfew day. Everything just
shut down, and I remember seeing here in my room
is going okay. Everything I had planned for that month
(18:05):
two months was just wiped out and we don't know
how long it be. And they're like, don't go all
as solids, you have to and all this. It was
a crazy I just I just never forget that March
twenty twenty. It was a crazy time period and you really,
we all have we all had to be calibrating. You
all had to kind of go what does this all
mean in a big scheme of things. And actually, Pat
Doak was the best thing that ever happened to me,
(18:26):
so to speaking of my business, maybe really it kind
of it did. It gave me a purpose I didn't
realize and I just kind of went, it's been, it's been.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's been good to me. Of course I have to
say it like that, but it's been good to me.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
So I from I think for many people. Obviously for
the majority of people it was terrible. But for the
people who were lucky enough to stay safe and stay healthy,
it provided a chance to change, a chance to grow.
And for those of us who took it, we were
better for it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I have to ask, we'll get to but I had
to ask, where are your great Me and Tony.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I don't get to keep them the show on them.
I have some very nice certificates that are on the
wall of my office.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You also have your nomination like that to you.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I do. I do, but I tell you it's interesting
to turn about the thrill or often right. As a producer,
it's nice, obviously it's nice. I'm not knocking it. But
you are a manager and a cheerleader and a problem solver,
and those are valuable things. And I have nothing but
respect for the best producers. But for me personally, that
(19:39):
wasn't where I saw my value. I don't think of
myself as oh good, I'm good at managing, I'm good
at problems solving. Not really, I'm fine, But it's not
what I value myself. What I value myself is my voice,
is my view of the world and my ability to
express it in words. And so you know, just this
(20:01):
last year, I got nominated for Olivier as a writer
for a different musical, for a show I made of
Lenny Henry called The Boy with Wings, a family musical
that I really made for my daughter. I made so
she could have something that she would enjoy, and she
got the second preview was her seventh birthday, So that
was a pretty good day. And that was a thrill,
(20:23):
that nomination. Being part of that group of people who
had made great children's theater to be recognized for that.
That was the thing I'm proudnessed off in terms of
awards and all that stuff. And by the way, most
of it is not you know, we do this for
the process. We don't do this because someone gives you
(20:44):
a ribbon at the end. But it was nice to
be recognized for the thing I value, which is my
words on a page. And so that was a good feeling.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
It's okay to like it, Arvina. I get we in
all seriousness, we don't when it comes to into this,
I want some awards to you. But like I never
thought I was. That wasn't why I came to the business.
And so I agree. I get you saying it's one
of those things that there are cute little trinkets along
the way. But it's but I don't know how you
look at it. As for me, it's more like I'm
(21:16):
adding to my resume for the next project, because I
meant project your last project.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
So people people seem to want to take meetings more
when you're nominated for a major walk that's nice. That's nice.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Other than you know, do you like me?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Also, it's more of a marketing thing, so it's like
it's kind of like it's I have my awards on
my man's all inter up there whatever. But I'm just
I'm very much. It's it's a marketing thing because again
there's goods your last project, you know what I mean,
you have to move on to the next thing. Speaking
on that, there are a couple of things, and I
dog hears your books. I read, I was reading everything.
But I love this. In a book, there's always a
(21:56):
dedication page or something in the front, and I'm gonna
read it the way it's it's this is this is
because I got some of them. I don't know all
I got saw them. Okay to A C D E
H W E R b O w j M b
h g w R j z n g M.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
C R A H and s R. This form of flattery.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
So the dedication itself, thank you, I've got you picked
up on this. So the dedication itself is a is
an homage. So the book has it at some well
known characters from the sort of Victorian and Waldean.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I saw, I saw Holmes and Watson.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Oh there's some people in here we know.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yes, So so Holmes and Watson are in it, and
obviously everybody knows who they are. But the other Pardet
are Raffles and Bunny. And Raffles and Bunny. Interestingly, most
people today, unless they go deep in this stuff, don't
know who they are. But Raffles and Bunny were for
(23:10):
nearly one hundred years as famous as Holmes and Watson.
Raffles and Bunny were the sort of dark inversion. Raffles
is the master gentleman thief and Bunny is his sidekick
and the sort of society thieves, and they go and
relieve the rich and wealthy of their jewels and their silver.
(23:31):
Now here's the backstory, and genuinely they were incredibly famous movies,
TV shows, radio spinoffs. David Niven played Raffles in a movie.
The books were huge best sellers, and they were created
by a gentleman called E. W. Hornan, who is the
(23:52):
first dedication there e wh Now. E W. Hornan is
was very famous as a writer who created Raffles and Bunny.
But today if anybody knows who he is, it's because
he was brother in law to Arthur Conan Doyle. Okay,
and obviously you can see that he was influenced by
(24:16):
his brother in law and creating uh Come on through
cos he was influenced by his brother in law when
he created Yes, my daughter has returned, she may join us.
We will see. So Oldman was influenced obviously heavily by
(24:38):
his brother in law Afghan and Doyle. I mean, to
a ridiculous extent, Raffles and Bunny are basically mirror images
of Shock and Watson. And when he published his first collection,
he dedicated it to a c D this form of flattery.
And so I'm doing a little nod to that, which
(25:00):
maybe nobody in the world other than now you and
me and our listeners. Your listeners will understand what I'm doing.
But that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well, I figure that those HG WHG wals right.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
That is true. But I'm not going to control and
deny everyone. There are people will know who they are
or they want.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
But they are flattery.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
I figure it's like you're saying, like you know, the
imitations of form of flattery, and I figure it was
a take on that.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I figure it was taken on completely.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
They're all authors who either are directly the creations are
in this book, or touch this book in some way,
or their example has inspired me in the writing of
this book.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yes, but also on the next page.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I just had this discussion with somebody the day you
must not make the criminal the hero author Cornan Doyle,
and I had to talk with a writer. We're talking
about how, you know most criminals, well, most villains, criminals
(26:09):
are the hero of their own story. That's kind of
the point, right that they think they're justified in what
they're doing, so they see themselves a certain way. So
that why was that quote? And then as I read
I read the book, so it's kind of fact like, so,
why was that quote resonant for you?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
That's you that you felt that.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, the original context is Colonel Doyle to his brother
in law saying, don't do this, don't make the criminal,
don't make the thief the hero. That way you encourage
your morality. That that was the original context. Obviously don't
quite agree with that. I think you can make anyone
the hero. Yeah, But what I'm really saying here, and
(26:50):
I you know, this is a spoiler. This is a book. Look,
it's a it's a thriller. I hope it's a page turner.
They are murders, there's Charlocke, There's lots of fun stuff
in it, but it is a out this question of empire.
It's about the question of imperialism and colonization, and to
some extent it has an anti colonization decogonization sort of here.
(27:15):
So of course, the question for me is for those
of us who love Sherlock and Watson, who love Tarzan,
who love all the sort of literature of the period,
that the sort of English British canon of adventure, but
where people of color? Where are we in those stories?
(27:37):
And the answer is, universally, we're the bad guys, or
where their exotics, or we're the curios, or we're the villains.
What the most One of the most famous Chilock Holm
stories is the Sign of the Foe, the Sign of
the Four, which is about these dastardly Indians and one
dastardly islander picked me up islander who are evil and
(28:02):
greedy and murderous, and I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure
they were Indians and Africans in London at the time
who were not those things, but we never see them
in the stories. And so that's sort of That's a
little bit of what I'm doing in this book is
to go, I love this stuff. I've been reading Sherlock
(28:24):
since I was five years old. But I wanted to
put me in that story, and I wanted to put
not just me, but I wanted to put out the
voice of the colonized and have them turned to Sharlock
and go, dude, whose side are you on? You're meant
to be this great champion of justice? Have you not noticed?
(28:44):
You're the agent of an evil empire which is raping
the world just not occurred to your incredible powers of
deduction and observation. And so that's part of what's going
on in this book.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I know, I know that I like you.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I liked it, I like I co signed that thought.
I loved it. It's because because it was unexpected. As
I'm reading it, I'm going, oh, there's some messages in
here that could could resonate today. And you know in
your story, I mean, and that's what a great book does.
(29:19):
It's like and as a writer, you seem to have
interwoven where it's not super banging, it's not super preachy,
it's not banging on the head, but it's it makes
you just think a little bit. You're like, oh, okay,
I know a lot of people in America, Uh, there's
a generation of I would say black folk who love Westerns.
(29:41):
My great great aunts and all that are all they
grew up those fifty West and the fifty They love
that stuff. It was halfway, it's mostly racist most of
the time, but they still love it. So there's this
thing that you said, you can like a genre and
may not be represented well in it. So now it's
our turn we represented well in it. Right now, that's
see the thing, right.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
And that's what you know Mario van Peebles has done,
and that's what James Samuel did in the Heart of
They Fall. You know, I've known James since back in
the day, and like he's been waiting to tell that
story for exactly that reason, right, we they were a
lot of black cowboys. Let's be clear, there were a
(30:25):
lot of black cowboys, and they're not in the stories,
and so let's put them in. And equally, I mean,
here's a crazy thing about the wild West. So almost
every town on the sort of in the gold Rush,
all the gold Rush towns and the wild West frontier
had a tamale shop. Right, this is true, and I
(30:49):
wonder I've got to write about this. They had a
tamale shop they had, like, you know, a Mexican food shop.
And but here's the crazy thing. Most of the people
fronting those shops, the shopkeepers that cooks and owners of
those shops, were not Mexican. They were largely Indian. Because
(31:14):
there was a guy called Tamali Jim who was the
first guy. He was from the Kaiber Pass and he's
sort of famous for a bunch of reasons. He got
caught up in some Supreme con litigation, ended up getting murdered.
But anyway, he's a whole different story. But he was Indian.
And then a bunch of other Indians figured out that
this was a market niche that because they were brown
(31:37):
and could cook, they could own. And so I feel
a bit bad. It's like cultural appropriation from Mexicans that
there's a bunch of Indians in the wild West cooking
Tamali's and becoming rich, And like, where is that story
in Unforgiven? Where's that story in Shane? You know that story?
Speaker 1 (31:58):
We also the same thing, I mean South Asian. I
mean there was I don't remember this. I think it
was about God. It was like fifteen years ago or so,
all of a sudden, about tens of years ago, all
of a sudden, South Asians ran. I'm telling me especially,
it was like every short of South Asian. It was like,
it's weird. Are your door is open? I'm like, who's
coming behind you? Nobody's and never door. Your door just
(32:20):
opened close, like coming through, I want to see you.
But it was like it's and I kept thinking of myself,
like you're even less than represented than black people and
and Latinos and so a few have come through, obviously,
and you know, and I'm remember a slum Dog Millionaire
(32:42):
became huge. That was one thing that kind of came through.
And dep Hotel has kind of made something. But there's
like a few out there that are I thought, that's
even so for you to try to look for something
or someone looks like you.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
In Amazing and a mainstream production.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
There were one hundred percent terrorists right one terrorists. There's
you know, Art Malik in True Lies, terrorists, Naveen, Naveen Andrews,
even Navi and Andrews in Lost is playing inexplicably, is
playing an Iraqi. Why would you cast Naveen Andrews to
(33:25):
play in Iraqi? Why would you just make the character
Indian or cast An Iraqi. Either is fine, right, but
you know it was the nineties. It was a fantasy island.
It's all good. So no, there was there was nobody
or very few. There were writers, right, they were writers.
(33:47):
There was Salman Rashti. There was Honeyed Kureshi, yes, there
you know, and and and there was many others, Anita Desai,
you know, the list goes on. But for the most part,
writing about India or writing stories that came out of India. Now,
the exception to this was Hanit Kureshi, who was writing
(34:08):
you know, My Beautiful Launderette and Sleep and Sleep with
Me and the Black Album, and you know, he was
writing stories of contemporary London. And I was like, oh
cool that we so we can do that too. We
get to do that too. We don't all have to
write stories about India. I had never been to India.
(34:29):
I could write a story about India and then and
then and so you you look for license. So I
took my license from other people.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
So my heroes, you gotta have anyway out. This is
my daughter, my daughter, James. It's no data season love that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Don't love that?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So yeah, so you have to I mean, I remember
one place this book came out of is I remember
I was at comic con. I was a comic con
with a TV show of mine.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I was.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I was executive producer of a show called Gently So
Holistic Detective Agency. And I was doing a panel with
the cast, and somebody in the audience asked, what's your
favorite comic con postplay? Right? Who do you want to
come to comic con as? And so we're working through
(35:26):
the line of the cast. I think I'm lost. So
Elijah Wood goes first, and of course for him, it's
like I'm going to be It's like, well, I'm not
going to be Frodo.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And they worked out and everybody has an answer, and
you get to me. And the cast was like a
bunch of white folks and a couple of black folks,
and everyone had an answer, everyone had a character. They
get to me, and I went, here's my problem, Like
I was, like, I would like to say Charlocke, I
would like to say Superman, I would like to say,
(36:00):
you know, Philip Marlowe. But the truth is, I say,
I don't get to be those people. At best, I
get to be the brown Sherlock or the brown Superman. Right,
and there isn't an Indian superhero And I was like,
but why, and you know, this isn't a superhero book,
but it has those iconic characters, and it asked the
(36:23):
question like, couldn't one of them be brown? Couldn't another
of them be black? Who side would they be on?
Where would a brown man and a black man stand?
Visit the Sherlock and Tarzan and Watson? Where would they
stand in Churchill? And how would they see each other?
Would they be allies or would they be adversaries? And
so that was a fun thing to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So what what were what was one of the challenges
You've done graphic knowledge than colleagues, you've done plays, But
what was one of the challenges in running.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
A book for you?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
More words?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Oh? How funny? Okay, okay?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Books books have more words than any of those other
things I can write. You know, a play or screenplay
is say ninety to one hundred and twenty pages of dialogue, right,
dialogue is it's just look look at it on a layout.
There's less words. It's like character name sentence, character name sentence.
(37:30):
This is a lot of description, This is a lot
of prose, This is a lot of thoughts. And of
course that's an amazing gift to a writer that they
get to just go. When I'm writing a TV show, nobody,
I don't get to go. Oh, the character sat down
and thought for three hours about the history of colonialism.
(37:50):
I don't get to do that. I don't get to
narrate in a monologue, right, And this is a first
person novel told by this extra ordinary character, Belvida dev Sing.
I got to go inside his mind and I got
to talk directly to the audience about big subjects and
(38:11):
both you know, his soul searching and wrestling with his
falling in love, and his sense of duty and obligation,
and his sense of family and honor. And he gets
to directly address us. That's a great gift to go on,
to go on digressions to and so on. But it's
a lot of words, dude. I mean, I I know
(38:33):
I can write a play. I can write the first
job of a play or a movie in a month.
It does not. It takes longer to write a book.
It takes.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
That's hilarious. It does. And you're right, and I mean
that's the dual purpose of it. It's like you have
the luxury of going wherever you want and expressing it
in a book. Because the word used the words where
are your plays and screenplays?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
There's exposition points that you don't want to talk too much,
like that's the audience.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
It's just too much.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
So yeah, I think, I said, it's kind of yeah,
but it's like you have to explain in a book.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
You can't you can't use visual cues, you can't do audio.
It has to be written out.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
We wrote them out, and in fact, I went to
the brilliant editor and one of the things she said
to me a few times is about a couple of
the chapters. She went, you realize you've written an entire
chapter in dialogue And I went, oh, how far? Okay,
And she's like, yeah, it's just all dialogue. She's like,
(39:32):
maybe you could describe what the characters are doing. And
I'm like, they're talking to each other, how do you
describe what they're doing? The actors will oh, no actors,
got it, got it? No actors? Okay. So then I
found myself going back in writing. I reached behind me
(39:52):
and scratched my ear quizzically. I adjusted my seat in
my chair, like this is not shit. I've ever had
to write before, Like, you don't need to tell of
that to adjust the seat in the chair. Then I'll
figure that out.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
I just want to read this one little part because
I like the way Age likes the way it sounds,
and folks, I'm just I'm picking a part of the book.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Am I not giving anything away? Just I just like this.
I just like this one. I just want to read it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
When written first at Heaven's command arose from out of
the Azure main. This was the charter of the land,
and guardian angels sang the strain the quiet. Taking the
place of the Guardian angels, their voices soared into the triumphalist,
lataristic chorus. Rule Britannia, Britannia, rule the waves, Britain's never, never, never,
(40:45):
ever will be slaves. I was confused, Rule Britannia. It's
not a religious song, and certainly not part of any
Catholic liturgy. I did not understand how this nationalistic, imperialistic
anthem was being sung, and a house of worship, and
heeding from my unspoken objections, to choir, thundered cheerfully into
(41:06):
the second verse. The nations not so blessed as the must,
in their turns to tyrants fall, while thou shalt flourish,
great and free the dread and envy of them all.
I stood up suddenly angry. I wished to confront the
choir master of remitting this atrocity, for soling this sacred
(41:27):
space with this peon to persecution, oppression, for enlisting these
beautiful children with their soaring voices as a tool of
imperial propaganda. The lyrics were ranked full of lives lives
each rhyme and pocritical offense. Britain's nervely slaves. But the
empire have been built on the slave trade, on the
(41:50):
broken backs of those the British enslaved and soul. The
tyrants to which so many nations had fallen were the
British monarch and their agents. I just I just love that.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
You say so much in that and I didn't see it, folks.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I was ready to sing, but I I just but
that's I'm like, that's folks, that's just an excerpt of
what this book is about. It's like, you really, that's
a very powerful thing he's saying. It's like, and I
want I'm not gonna give it away for you because
that's just a really powerful part right there. I thought
I didn't expect that in a book like that, a thriller.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Well thank you. Well, it's interesting you choose that bit,
because the working title for the book for the longest
time was The Dread and the Envy.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Say that's a good name.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Maybe maybe for the sequel, but that was a line,
you know, that's that's a line from the hymn from
Rule Britannia, and it seemed to me to capture this
thing with that. Many of us, I know, the generalized
too far, but I think a lot of colonized people,
a lot of people who have been subject to imperialism
in whatever form too, imperial violence, whether from a colony,
(43:02):
a former colony, or descendants of slaves or native people
who have been you know, eradicated or partially eradicated by
imperialist power. We have this dual relationship in our generation
and the generations that have come, because there's much that
we envy. We envy the power of imperialism, we envy
the We may love the literature, we may love the language,
(43:25):
we may love large aspects of the culture, but we
also have reason to fear it. And that combination of
dread and envy, of desire and disgust, of anger and
joy is part of what it means to be. I
think a thinking person of color in today's world, and
(43:49):
a descendant of the colonized, or the victims or of history.
Not the victims ourselves, but the descendants of victims. And
I wanted to write about that tension. I love the
British canon, I love London. I love a lot about
(44:10):
the history. You know, one of the things I say
in the book's dedication is, you know, Churchill is a
character in the book, and I've always been obsessed to
a Churchill. But I think my obsession is sort of
sado masochistic, you know, I think he is. I agree.
He was a great man. He was the indispensable man
of the twentieth century. He was also a horrible racist,
(44:34):
and that was not incidental to his greatness. That was
part off his greatness, in that his greatness came out
of a conviction that he and his people were born
to rule the earth. And that is bizarre and interesting
(44:55):
and full of contradiction and therefore worth writing about and.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
For us, and this is and I agree with you.
We live a dual well, our lens, the lens in
which we live and see and view things about our
own countries as a person of color or an immigrant
or whatever words you want to use. But you're like,
I'm proud to be here. I'm here for a reason.
(45:22):
There's a reason, and we also acknowledge what's been done
kind of solid where someone who's maybe homogenized and from that,
it's part of that, you know what, I think about
it before, never really thought about it. But we kind of,
like you said, we're not saying we're victim, were just
saying that it's we know what the past was, we
(45:42):
know how things, we view things just dually. We just
just that's just right.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
It is a greater act to patriotism to love your
country knowing it's evil to love your country. I want
it to evolve away towards the more perfect union, away
from its its worst instincts, to love it blindly. Like
(46:09):
in a relationship, when you love someone blind to their faults,
we say your love blind, your love struck, You're you're
a fool in love. Real love, grown up love, seize
the person for all their flaws, all their imperfections, for
all their cruelties as well as all their good points,
(46:30):
and yeah, we have that relationship to our countries and
to the world and to the literature of the world.
Like this isn't a big political book. It's a small
political book because it says much about the literature of
imperialism as it is about imperialism.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I agree, I Arvin. I mean you're you're your best friend.
I just think you're amazing. We had a few snaps
try to get together. I cople things coming up, and
we finally I'm so glad we finally did this.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Back Annie any any any any anytime, and if you're
ever in La we've gotta have a drink or something.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Thank you, James. I really enjoyed this. I'll tell you
you're the your my in terms of the press tour
for this book, you're the first stop. So this was
me figuring out stuff. You're the first interview. It stops now.
I've got like two months of it books now, but
you are the first stop. So it's get in order
to stop this tour with you.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Thank you. Good luck to the others. No, I'm the
best folks.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
So okay, So when it's when this comes out, as
I'm releasing this, folks, the book will either be about
to come out or will be out. So you still
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
You will want to follow.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Him on Amazon at least go ahead and follow him
there for the Great Game. And also uh Barnes and Noble,
beyond Barnes and Noble, all your look of stuff. But
I also do this all the time to you. There
are a lot of folks. You don't believe somebody imperials
and stuff. Don't believe in the big box stores.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
This is what you do.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
You go to your local mom and pop bookstore. Go
to your local neighborhood bookstore. There's an ISBN number on
these books. You tell them to order it and bring
it to the bookstore and they will order it. More
chance than not they'll order it. You can bring the
book there and purchase it there. We want this book
to go to everyone, right.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Amen to that. Amen to that. You can also go
to bookshop dot org, which is a network of local bookstores,
and they will find it for you and get it
to you anyhow you get it, We're happy. Just go
get it paperback, paperback. Kendall and the Wonderful Audiobook James
will not be reading it, although he did a pretty
(48:38):
good job. Today. It's read by the wonderful subju Boscah,
So I hope you like it.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Follow as Arvinethandavid dot Cos his website. He's at Arvin
dot David on Instagram and follow me. Run at you
already is our Facebook's a blue sky at our r
v D.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
So follow them everywhere. Just do it.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
I told you, just do it. You won't be sorry.
And the great game is the book. I'm James Jora
Pages on Facebook. We believe in books. We believe in
authors of all races and sizes and shapes.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Uh here reading is.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
We don't. We don't believe in band books. You don't
believe in hiding people. It's it's you have choices, and
we want to help with these choices. There's a lot
of great stories out there that are being told and
we want to say and I personally want to support that.
I've been James EU Junior everywhere, of course, and we'll
see you next time.
You know, we're gonna showcase a really new good book.
But also the author is fascinating too, So it's one
of a few times I have both going on at
the same time. And this guy is he's busy doing
all kinds and has his hands and all kinds of
parts of the business.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So I'm happy to have it with me here today.
And he has a three D.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
He's a three name person like me, Like lot three
name people we like like that. Also, Uh, he's a
writer and a producer. He's done Broadway, he's done television,
he's done films, he's done You're done comics, also correct comics,
He's done that. Like he's his hands have touched various
(00:48):
various areas of the industry, which I just love that completely.
He has a new book, The Great Game. It's a thriller,
and I'm gonna read a couple extracts from it with
his permission, trying to use my voice. I was trying
to lubricate my voice to get ready for it and
do that. Uh. And I just you know, and I
want to find out from you know, from where he
comes from, where he is raised, where he is now,
(01:10):
and all this kind of comes together and of course
about the book help me. Welcome arvind Ethan David.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hello, Jia, it's great to be here. Thank you for
that introduction. I will try and live up to it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, you know, you don't have to try, you are
doing it. And I just firstly, I have to ask
you to ask people just a question, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Today's a good day. Two day is a good day.
It started early. I have a seven year old daughter,
those those of your listeners who have young children know
that no day doesn't start early. But she is currently
in the park with her art teacher, drawing passing dogs.
So so at any moment in this podcast, they could
(01:53):
come in with paintings of dogs or possibly actual dogs
that they have brought home. So just the and if
you hear barking, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
We are jail j media. We love dogs and I
rescue dogs. I have all my dogs are rescues. We're big.
You know, it makes you. The fans like animals too.
They just like to like to see the animal. So
if a dog comes through, you know, we're good. Except
that you like that, it's very good, very I you know,
I have. It was Mother's Day of course for you,
(02:24):
as we're recording a few days ago and my birthday
actually it was my birthday and Mother's day.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Healthy birthday, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So it's kind of crazy. I'm heading towards sixty, so
it's kind of very interesting. And uh, but my kids,
my daughters are grown and I'm a grandfather. I have
a grandkids, so it's it's been fun having them as
we're all kind of aging together.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I appreciate them.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What is one thing you hope your seven year old
daughter will keep throughout her life?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The joy of play? I think that's the thing we
all give up too soon, and we almost give it
up like a virtue. We go now it is time
to lay aside the childish things like play. Play is
the whole thing. If you're not playing, what are you
doing with your life? I joke I'm in the middle
(03:13):
of finishing a new play and I write for theater
quite a lot as well, and everybody goes, what are
you doing? I'm like, I am playing all day. It's
literally in the title, I am making a thing off play.
And it's not an accident that our oldest live art
(03:34):
form is called play because that's what our ancestors did.
They got together and they had fun, and at some
point some of them started the audience and some of
them got up and got paid for it. But it
started as play.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You know, I've never heard I've never heard it said
that way, and you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I like that. I'm gonna take that with me. I
would take that with me. I like that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Oh it's call play. It's called play. That's that's what
you do. You I've interviewed older celebrities over the years,
over the years, and the one through line, I'll say,
and these are ones who are still working and they're
like in their seventies, eighties, nineties, whatever, And I was
asking what keeps you going? And they say, I still
remember me as a little kid. I'll stayed on some
(04:19):
various forum, right.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I think that's so true. You look at you know,
we were talking about this a couple of nights ago.
I'm of the age that my parents and my friend's
parents are all in their eighties now, and some of
them are like winding down physically and mentally and socially,
and it's sad. And some of them are still playing.
(04:46):
And you look at John Lithgo, you look at Ian McKellen,
You look at these people who are in their eighties,
and Larry David Jerry Seinfeld is seventh. For God's sake, right,
it's about the attitude. Of course, you have to be
lucky in your genetics and your health and all of that.
(05:08):
That is not nothing, but all things being equal, it's
the people who keep having fun who keep going longest.
And I want to keep going. Then my daughter's seven.
I can't. I can't stop, she said to me. To
she said to me recently, she said, Daddy, I think
you should live for another fifty one years. And I'm
(05:30):
I'm fifty one. So she was She's like, I would
like you to have as much again. And I'm like, okay,
I'm good with that. I'm good of that if you are.
So that's the goal.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I'm fifty seven ahead of you and I And that's
that's really cute.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I know that. Like Dame j D.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Dench that stage and she's like eighties. Well look at
Harrison Ford. He's like three different shows. It is eighties.
Like it's just it's it is amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Curiosity, which is also a childlike trade, we don't lose curiosity.
Keep going curious. Now, doubt the statistic that people retire
die within five years. A lot of times they have
nothing for once they stop, it's kind of like, okay,
so they say, actually keep going. I just keep doing
whatever it is you want to do. I mean, you
(06:24):
you have choices later when you get older, probably more
than when you're younger. Keep going as long as long
as you can keep going yourself to death. But I
just keep going, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Doing what do we hear? I mean, I think we
all step to ask what are we here? Four? And
if you have a half decent answer to that question,
keep doing it. Because if you have a reason to
be here, then you decide to stop doing your reason
for being here, then you're in trouble because then there's
no then you have no reason to be here. Then
(06:53):
you will stop. You will stop being here.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Also, like I know, I was, is that you work
to like pace sixty five whatever, so you were, and
then you retire and then you just like travel the
world or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I was like, why is that necessarily the thing to do? Like?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I don't maybe, I like you said, maybe I like
my job. I mean when we can travel earlier, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, No, I'm my parents both love My mother's an academic.
She's just touching eighty and she's still teaching and lecturing
and traveling and publishing. So no, my family model, my
dad similarly is still pretty active. And so now my
family model is you work his life and make if
(07:36):
you're lucky, you find something you love. And of course
the danger is right, I mean we could be sounding
like workaholics. Yeah, you build your family. You build your
family into it, you build your friendships into it, you
build your travel into it. I mean, you know, we
are in a unique privilege, right, This is not real work.
We do not We do not like you know, build
(07:57):
roads or dig ditches or or you know, even drive trucks.
Like we got to make ship up for a living.
We get to hang out with our friends and tell
stories and we get paid for it. Like and sometimes
we get to do that in exotic locations and interesting places.
Then we get to travel around the world talking about
(08:19):
the stories we made. This is ridiculous. This is this
is not something anyone should ever want to stop doing.
The times that I meet writers and they complain about
the business of being a writer, I'm like, stop, dude,
no one's holding a gun to your head. Stop if
it's not making you happy. Go try a real jaw
(08:39):
for six months and then see.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I think, are you my twin? I feel like you're
saying something like here, I say all the time. Oh
my god, I agree. I agree with everything you just said.
You know, because it's it's fine because first of all,
it's easy to complain, right, people complain. But there were
two right, It's like I actually have had real I
was a nurse for fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I worked at Insuran. I've had real jobs. Hated them.
Ye jobs, this is fun.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Me too. I was a corporate lawyer that sucks. I've
run a bunch of production companies that was okay at
least I was, you know, making stuff, and I was
adjacent to writers. But no, this is better. Actually, just
the page in me better.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yes, I agree with you. Now you come from I
mean from around the world. I mean you know, I
think you were. You were born in Malaysia, grew up
in uh in London? Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
In England? Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah? Pretty much? Pretty much. Yeah, I was born in Malaysia.
My parents are ethnically Indian. My mother is a Midnight's child,
so she arrived in Malaysia. Is a little baby in
July nineteen forty seven with her homeland on fire as
a refugee. My father's third or fourth generation, so but
(09:58):
they were global, so I was, you know, I was
counted around the world as a little baby because my
mom is an academic and my and my dad was
an academic and then became a corporate guy. So yeah,
I grew up Malaysia, Singapore, the UK primarily. But since
then I've lived in New York and in California. I'm
(10:20):
currently talking to you from Boulder, Colorado, where I particular
little writing sabbatical. Uh So, yeah, I get around, but
Asia and and the UK and America sort of my
my triangle of my triangle of sadness and my triangle
of joy.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I like that idea. I like you said to you that,
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Well, it's good on you. Like you're you're looking at
your looking great. So you're doing fine with that. We're
go'll get to a book. I scarified, But I just
want to give a little context to who he is,
because I mean, that's that's how I thing we pour
into our books are part of us. So I said,
you've done Broadway television, You've done film. When I say Brahwai.
You also done music halls and part of them, especially
(11:05):
Jagged Little Hill, which I.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Saw, Actually, oh thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I loved I thought it was very unique and the
way they took your songs. I love the whole thing
and stuff. I just know if you, because you just
said you were a lawyer, you did corporate, how did you?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
For me?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
It was quitting all that cold turkey at forty and
then starting a holy life so last I said that
was twenty years when doing it? For you, how did
that transition go from that real job so to speak,
to real job or eel, how that go there?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It was less cold turkey for me. It was more
sort of dual tracking because I had I did a
lot of theater and a lot of writing and a
lot of performing and directing at university, and I always
knew that was what I wanted to do, but you know,
real life gets in the way. I needed to earn
a living. Actually, for me, it was a very practical thing.
(11:59):
I needed a passport. I didn't have a British passport.
I certainly didn't have an American passport, and I knew
those were places I needed to work if I was
to be a writer and a storyteller. But you know,
little theater companies don't tend to do your visa applications
or you know, there's no publisher who says, all right,
(12:21):
I'll sponsor your passport application. There's no that's not a thing.
So do you know who sponsors visa applications and passport applications?
Law firms. Law firms are really good in it. They
have whole departments. So I went to law school and
started as an attorney, and bless them, they sponsored my
(12:45):
visa and kept me in the country until I could
get a passport. And the day I did, I walked
into the senior partner's office and I went, I think
I'm good, and bless her. She wasn't surprised, and she said,
I think that's a good decision, which which sounds like
I was a terrible lawyer. I don't think I was.
(13:06):
I think I was fine. But she said, and she said,
she said, she said, listen, if you stick around here,
you know, you might end up as a partner in
seven or eight years and that would be great, but
you will be bored. And I went, I'm bored now.
So she's like, you should you should go. So that
was very plice of them. And then I was very
(13:28):
lucky a client, a client said to me, took me
out to lunch. Wonderful gentleman called Tim Mayer, who founded
a company called kettle Wisps, if you've ever had those.
So Tim invented the luxury chit category. It didn't exist
before coming Priss and Tim invented that company and ran
it and then sold it very successfully. And he had
(13:51):
been a client and he took me out for lunch
when he heard I was quitting, and he said, what
do you want to do next? And I said, well,
I think I want to have a theater company and
make plays and make stuff. And he went, all right,
write a business plan and we'll vack you. And so
that was the start of my storytelling sort of my
professional storytelling life. I had done stuff as a student.
(14:14):
I had done stuff as a sort of on the
on the fringe, you know, on the fringe of London
and in the fringes. But that was the start of
me professionally. But I started as a producer because you know,
somebody had written the check and I was responsible for
that money. So I wasn't driving. I wasn't writing the stories.
I was producing them. But we made a bunch of theater,
(14:35):
we made a bunch of animation internet stuff, and that
got me going. And that sort of just kept happening
for most of the next fifteen years, and I was
producing other people's stuff, and I was very lucky. I
got to work with extraordinary writers. I worked with Tom
Stoppard and Diablo Cody, who I made Jog a Little
(14:57):
Pill with, and Max Landers and David Bidil and Simon
Rich and I worked with all these amazing writers, really,
you know, the greatest writers, some of the greatest writers
in the world. And I got to sit next to
them as they were writing, and I got to give
them ridiculously though it was. I got to give them notes,
and I got to understand their process and help them
(15:19):
tell their stories. And over the years they would say,
you know, you should do this writing thing. You're quite
good at it. Why don't you do this yourself? And
so I so gradually I started to and I started
in sudden in graphic novels actually, and now I think
I've written seven graphic novels over the years. And then
(15:44):
one of them got optioned for television and then I
found myself writing a television pilot and that led to
the next television gig, and that led to the next
television gig, and that just started taking over. And I
guess for me, the big turning point was the pandemic
when I had a lot of producing happening in January
(16:08):
and February twenty twenty. Yes, and I had a lot
of I had a show on Broadway, I had a
TV show and production, I had a movie in production.
And then it was March eleventh and I had nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
That remember, Is that crazy? Oh my god, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And so with a whole lot of nothing, And of
course there was a lot of work to try and
take care of the actors and crews and keep the
companies together, and lots of fun time doing applications for
government grants and insurance and all this stuff. But my
creative life came to an abrupt hot, right. I had
(16:46):
all this production, all this creative producing, and it stopped.
And I remember sus saying to my then wife, just
saying to her, I don't think I can do it again.
I got it, just you know, I don't think I
could just come out of this and do the same
thing again. I feel like I've done it. I've done it.
I was lucky I got to do it to a
(17:07):
pretty high level. You know. Jagged Little Pillow was my
sort of swan song as a lead producer, and I
the show won the Grammy and the Tony and you know,
we did well. And then I was like, I think,
next time I do this, I need to be the
one writing the story myself. And so that started, and
(17:28):
here we are, I guess five years six years after that,
and I've had some plays on and been nominated for
some awards, and now we're here to talk about my
first novel, The Great Game.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's it's amazing. You just said that. I think I
had PTSC when you mentioned the pandemic. I remember for
me it was it was March eighteenth, twenty twenty. I
was working for a couple of networks. They shut down.
I was like living in La. Everything shout in La.
We had this whole kind of curfew day. Everything just
shut down, and I remember seeing here in my room
is going okay. Everything I had planned for that month
(18:05):
two months was just wiped out and we don't know
how long it be. And they're like, don't go all
as solids, you have to and all this. It was
a crazy I just I just never forget that March
twenty twenty. It was a crazy time period and you really,
we all have we all had to be calibrating. You
all had to kind of go what does this all
mean in a big scheme of things. And actually, Pat
Doak was the best thing that ever happened to me,
(18:26):
so to speaking of my business, maybe really it kind
of it did. It gave me a purpose I didn't
realize and I just kind of went, it's been, it's been.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's been good to me. Of course I have to
say it like that, but it's been good to me.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
So I from I think for many people. Obviously for
the majority of people it was terrible. But for the
people who were lucky enough to stay safe and stay healthy,
it provided a chance to change, a chance to grow.
And for those of us who took it, we were
better for it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I have to ask, we'll get to but I had
to ask, where are your great Me and Tony.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I don't get to keep them the show on them.
I have some very nice certificates that are on the
wall of my office.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You also have your nomination like that to you.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I do. I do, but I tell you it's interesting
to turn about the thrill or often right. As a producer,
it's nice, obviously it's nice. I'm not knocking it. But
you are a manager and a cheerleader and a problem solver,
and those are valuable things. And I have nothing but
respect for the best producers. But for me personally, that
(19:39):
wasn't where I saw my value. I don't think of
myself as oh good, I'm good at managing, I'm good
at problems solving. Not really, I'm fine, But it's not
what I value myself. What I value myself is my voice,
is my view of the world and my ability to
express it in words. And so you know, just this
(20:01):
last year, I got nominated for Olivier as a writer
for a different musical, for a show I made of
Lenny Henry called The Boy with Wings, a family musical
that I really made for my daughter. I made so
she could have something that she would enjoy, and she
got the second preview was her seventh birthday, So that
was a pretty good day. And that was a thrill,
(20:23):
that nomination. Being part of that group of people who
had made great children's theater to be recognized for that.
That was the thing I'm proudnessed off in terms of
awards and all that stuff. And by the way, most
of it is not you know, we do this for
the process. We don't do this because someone gives you
(20:44):
a ribbon at the end. But it was nice to
be recognized for the thing I value, which is my
words on a page. And so that was a good feeling.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
It's okay to like it, Arvina. I get we in
all seriousness, we don't when it comes to into this,
I want some awards to you. But like I never
thought I was. That wasn't why I came to the business.
And so I agree. I get you saying it's one
of those things that there are cute little trinkets along
the way. But it's but I don't know how you
look at it. As for me, it's more like I'm
(21:16):
adding to my resume for the next project, because I
meant project your last project.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
So people people seem to want to take meetings more
when you're nominated for a major walk that's nice. That's nice.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Other than you know, do you like me?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Also, it's more of a marketing thing, so it's like
it's kind of like it's I have my awards on
my man's all inter up there whatever. But I'm just
I'm very much. It's it's a marketing thing because again
there's goods your last project, you know what I mean,
you have to move on to the next thing. Speaking
on that, there are a couple of things, and I
dog hears your books. I read, I was reading everything.
But I love this. In a book, there's always a
(21:56):
dedication page or something in the front, and I'm gonna
read it the way it's it's this is this is
because I got some of them. I don't know all
I got saw them. Okay to A C D E
H W E R b O w j M b
h g w R j z n g M.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
C R A H and s R. This form of flattery.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
So the dedication itself, thank you, I've got you picked
up on this. So the dedication itself is a is
an homage. So the book has it at some well
known characters from the sort of Victorian and Waldean.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I saw, I saw Holmes and Watson.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Oh there's some people in here we know.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yes, So so Holmes and Watson are in it, and
obviously everybody knows who they are. But the other Pardet
are Raffles and Bunny. And Raffles and Bunny. Interestingly, most
people today, unless they go deep in this stuff, don't
know who they are. But Raffles and Bunny were for
(23:10):
nearly one hundred years as famous as Holmes and Watson.
Raffles and Bunny were the sort of dark inversion. Raffles
is the master gentleman thief and Bunny is his sidekick
and the sort of society thieves, and they go and
relieve the rich and wealthy of their jewels and their silver.
(23:31):
Now here's the backstory, and genuinely they were incredibly famous movies,
TV shows, radio spinoffs. David Niven played Raffles in a movie.
The books were huge best sellers, and they were created
by a gentleman called E. W. Hornan, who is the
(23:52):
first dedication there e wh Now. E W. Hornan is
was very famous as a writer who created Raffles and Bunny.
But today if anybody knows who he is, it's because
he was brother in law to Arthur Conan Doyle. Okay,
and obviously you can see that he was influenced by
(24:16):
his brother in law and creating uh Come on through
cos he was influenced by his brother in law when
he created Yes, my daughter has returned, she may join us.
We will see. So Oldman was influenced obviously heavily by
(24:38):
his brother in law Afghan and Doyle. I mean, to
a ridiculous extent, Raffles and Bunny are basically mirror images
of Shock and Watson. And when he published his first collection,
he dedicated it to a c D this form of flattery.
And so I'm doing a little nod to that, which
(25:00):
maybe nobody in the world other than now you and
me and our listeners. Your listeners will understand what I'm doing.
But that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well, I figure that those HG WHG wals right.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
That is true. But I'm not going to control and
deny everyone. There are people will know who they are
or they want.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
But they are flattery.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
I figure it's like you're saying, like you know, the
imitations of form of flattery, and I figure it was
a take on that.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I figure it was taken on completely.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
They're all authors who either are directly the creations are
in this book, or touch this book in some way,
or their example has inspired me in the writing of
this book.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yes, but also on the next page.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I just had this discussion with somebody the day you
must not make the criminal the hero author Cornan Doyle,
and I had to talk with a writer. We're talking
about how, you know most criminals, well, most villains, criminals
(26:09):
are the hero of their own story. That's kind of
the point, right that they think they're justified in what
they're doing, so they see themselves a certain way. So
that why was that quote? And then as I read
I read the book, so it's kind of fact like, so,
why was that quote resonant for you?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
That's you that you felt that.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, the original context is Colonel Doyle to his brother
in law saying, don't do this, don't make the criminal,
don't make the thief the hero. That way you encourage
your morality. That that was the original context. Obviously don't
quite agree with that. I think you can make anyone
the hero. Yeah, But what I'm really saying here, and
(26:50):
I you know, this is a spoiler. This is a book. Look,
it's a it's a thriller. I hope it's a page turner.
They are murders, there's Charlocke, There's lots of fun stuff
in it, but it is a out this question of empire.
It's about the question of imperialism and colonization, and to
some extent it has an anti colonization decogonization sort of here.
(27:15):
So of course, the question for me is for those
of us who love Sherlock and Watson, who love Tarzan,
who love all the sort of literature of the period,
that the sort of English British canon of adventure, but
where people of color? Where are we in those stories?
(27:37):
And the answer is, universally, we're the bad guys, or
where their exotics, or we're the curios, or we're the villains.
What the most One of the most famous Chilock Holm
stories is the Sign of the Foe, the Sign of
the Four, which is about these dastardly Indians and one
dastardly islander picked me up islander who are evil and
(28:02):
greedy and murderous, and I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure
they were Indians and Africans in London at the time
who were not those things, but we never see them
in the stories. And so that's sort of That's a
little bit of what I'm doing in this book is
to go, I love this stuff. I've been reading Sherlock
(28:24):
since I was five years old. But I wanted to
put me in that story, and I wanted to put
not just me, but I wanted to put out the
voice of the colonized and have them turned to Sharlock
and go, dude, whose side are you on? You're meant
to be this great champion of justice? Have you not noticed?
(28:44):
You're the agent of an evil empire which is raping
the world just not occurred to your incredible powers of
deduction and observation. And so that's part of what's going
on in this book.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I know, I know that I like you.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I liked it, I like I co signed that thought.
I loved it. It's because because it was unexpected. As
I'm reading it, I'm going, oh, there's some messages in
here that could could resonate today. And you know in
your story, I mean, and that's what a great book does.
(29:19):
It's like and as a writer, you seem to have
interwoven where it's not super banging, it's not super preachy,
it's not banging on the head, but it's it makes
you just think a little bit. You're like, oh, okay,
I know a lot of people in America, Uh, there's
a generation of I would say black folk who love Westerns.
(29:41):
My great great aunts and all that are all they
grew up those fifty West and the fifty They love
that stuff. It was halfway, it's mostly racist most of
the time, but they still love it. So there's this
thing that you said, you can like a genre and
may not be represented well in it. So now it's
our turn we represented well in it. Right now, that's
see the thing, right.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
And that's what you know Mario van Peebles has done,
and that's what James Samuel did in the Heart of
They Fall. You know, I've known James since back in
the day, and like he's been waiting to tell that
story for exactly that reason, right, we they were a
lot of black cowboys. Let's be clear, there were a
(30:25):
lot of black cowboys, and they're not in the stories,
and so let's put them in. And equally, I mean,
here's a crazy thing about the wild West. So almost
every town on the sort of in the gold Rush,
all the gold Rush towns and the wild West frontier
had a tamale shop. Right, this is true, and I
(30:49):
wonder I've got to write about this. They had a
tamale shop they had, like, you know, a Mexican food shop.
And but here's the crazy thing. Most of the people
fronting those shops, the shopkeepers that cooks and owners of
those shops, were not Mexican. They were largely Indian. Because
(31:14):
there was a guy called Tamali Jim who was the
first guy. He was from the Kaiber Pass and he's
sort of famous for a bunch of reasons. He got
caught up in some Supreme con litigation, ended up getting murdered.
But anyway, he's a whole different story. But he was Indian.
And then a bunch of other Indians figured out that
this was a market niche that because they were brown
(31:37):
and could cook, they could own. And so I feel
a bit bad. It's like cultural appropriation from Mexicans that
there's a bunch of Indians in the wild West cooking
Tamali's and becoming rich, And like, where is that story
in Unforgiven? Where's that story in Shane? You know that story?
Speaker 1 (31:58):
We also the same thing, I mean South Asian. I
mean there was I don't remember this. I think it
was about God. It was like fifteen years ago or so,
all of a sudden, about tens of years ago, all
of a sudden, South Asians ran. I'm telling me especially,
it was like every short of South Asian. It was like,
it's weird. Are your door is open? I'm like, who's
coming behind you? Nobody's and never door. Your door just
(32:20):
opened close, like coming through, I want to see you.
But it was like it's and I kept thinking of myself,
like you're even less than represented than black people and
and Latinos and so a few have come through, obviously,
and you know, and I'm remember a slum Dog Millionaire
(32:42):
became huge. That was one thing that kind of came through.
And dep Hotel has kind of made something. But there's
like a few out there that are I thought, that's
even so for you to try to look for something
or someone looks like you.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
In Amazing and a mainstream production.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
There were one hundred percent terrorists right one terrorists. There's
you know, Art Malik in True Lies, terrorists, Naveen, Naveen Andrews,
even Navi and Andrews in Lost is playing inexplicably, is
playing an Iraqi. Why would you cast Naveen Andrews to
(33:25):
play in Iraqi? Why would you just make the character
Indian or cast An Iraqi. Either is fine, right, but
you know it was the nineties. It was a fantasy island.
It's all good. So no, there was there was nobody
or very few. There were writers, right, they were writers.
(33:47):
There was Salman Rashti. There was Honeyed Kureshi, yes, there
you know, and and and there was many others, Anita Desai,
you know, the list goes on. But for the most part,
writing about India or writing stories that came out of India. Now,
the exception to this was Hanit Kureshi, who was writing
(34:08):
you know, My Beautiful Launderette and Sleep and Sleep with
Me and the Black Album, and you know, he was
writing stories of contemporary London. And I was like, oh
cool that we so we can do that too. We
get to do that too. We don't all have to
write stories about India. I had never been to India.
(34:29):
I could write a story about India and then and
then and so you you look for license. So I
took my license from other people.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
So my heroes, you gotta have anyway out. This is
my daughter, my daughter, James. It's no data season love that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Don't love that?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So yeah, so you have to I mean, I remember
one place this book came out of is I remember
I was at comic con. I was a comic con
with a TV show of mine.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I was.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I was executive producer of a show called Gently So
Holistic Detective Agency. And I was doing a panel with
the cast, and somebody in the audience asked, what's your
favorite comic con postplay? Right? Who do you want to
come to comic con as? And so we're working through
(35:26):
the line of the cast. I think I'm lost. So
Elijah Wood goes first, and of course for him, it's
like I'm going to be It's like, well, I'm not
going to be Frodo.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And they worked out and everybody has an answer, and
you get to me. And the cast was like a
bunch of white folks and a couple of black folks,
and everyone had an answer, everyone had a character. They
get to me, and I went, here's my problem, Like
I was, like, I would like to say Charlocke, I
would like to say Superman, I would like to say,
(36:00):
you know, Philip Marlowe. But the truth is, I say,
I don't get to be those people. At best, I
get to be the brown Sherlock or the brown Superman. Right,
and there isn't an Indian superhero And I was like,
but why, and you know, this isn't a superhero book,
but it has those iconic characters, and it asked the
(36:23):
question like, couldn't one of them be brown? Couldn't another
of them be black? Who side would they be on?
Where would a brown man and a black man stand?
Visit the Sherlock and Tarzan and Watson? Where would they
stand in Churchill? And how would they see each other?
Would they be allies or would they be adversaries? And
so that was a fun thing to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So what what were what was one of the challenges
You've done graphic knowledge than colleagues, you've done plays, But
what was one of the challenges in running.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
A book for you?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
More words?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Oh? How funny? Okay, okay?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Books books have more words than any of those other
things I can write. You know, a play or screenplay
is say ninety to one hundred and twenty pages of dialogue, right,
dialogue is it's just look look at it on a layout.
There's less words. It's like character name sentence, character name sentence.
(37:30):
This is a lot of description, This is a lot
of prose, This is a lot of thoughts. And of
course that's an amazing gift to a writer that they
get to just go. When I'm writing a TV show, nobody,
I don't get to go. Oh, the character sat down
and thought for three hours about the history of colonialism.
(37:50):
I don't get to do that. I don't get to
narrate in a monologue, right, And this is a first
person novel told by this extra ordinary character, Belvida dev Sing.
I got to go inside his mind and I got
to talk directly to the audience about big subjects and
(38:11):
both you know, his soul searching and wrestling with his
falling in love, and his sense of duty and obligation,
and his sense of family and honor. And he gets
to directly address us. That's a great gift to go on,
to go on digressions to and so on. But it's
a lot of words, dude. I mean, I I know
(38:33):
I can write a play. I can write the first
job of a play or a movie in a month.
It does not. It takes longer to write a book.
It takes.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
That's hilarious. It does. And you're right, and I mean
that's the dual purpose of it. It's like you have
the luxury of going wherever you want and expressing it
in a book. Because the word used the words where
are your plays and screenplays?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
There's exposition points that you don't want to talk too much,
like that's the audience.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
It's just too much.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
So yeah, I think, I said, it's kind of yeah,
but it's like you have to explain in a book.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
You can't you can't use visual cues, you can't do audio.
It has to be written out.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
We wrote them out, and in fact, I went to
the brilliant editor and one of the things she said
to me a few times is about a couple of
the chapters. She went, you realize you've written an entire
chapter in dialogue And I went, oh, how far? Okay,
And she's like, yeah, it's just all dialogue. She's like,
(39:32):
maybe you could describe what the characters are doing. And
I'm like, they're talking to each other, how do you
describe what they're doing? The actors will oh, no actors,
got it, got it? No actors? Okay. So then I
found myself going back in writing. I reached behind me
(39:52):
and scratched my ear quizzically. I adjusted my seat in
my chair, like this is not shit. I've ever had
to write before, Like, you don't need to tell of
that to adjust the seat in the chair. Then I'll
figure that out.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
I just want to read this one little part because
I like the way Age likes the way it sounds,
and folks, I'm just I'm picking a part of the book.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Am I not giving anything away? Just I just like this.
I just like this one. I just want to read it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
When written first at Heaven's command arose from out of
the Azure main. This was the charter of the land,
and guardian angels sang the strain the quiet. Taking the
place of the Guardian angels, their voices soared into the triumphalist,
lataristic chorus. Rule Britannia, Britannia, rule the waves, Britain's never, never, never,
(40:45):
ever will be slaves. I was confused, Rule Britannia. It's
not a religious song, and certainly not part of any
Catholic liturgy. I did not understand how this nationalistic, imperialistic
anthem was being sung, and a house of worship, and
heeding from my unspoken objections, to choir, thundered cheerfully into
(41:06):
the second verse. The nations not so blessed as the must,
in their turns to tyrants fall, while thou shalt flourish,
great and free the dread and envy of them all.
I stood up suddenly angry. I wished to confront the
choir master of remitting this atrocity, for soling this sacred
(41:27):
space with this peon to persecution, oppression, for enlisting these
beautiful children with their soaring voices as a tool of
imperial propaganda. The lyrics were ranked full of lives lives
each rhyme and pocritical offense. Britain's nervely slaves. But the
empire have been built on the slave trade, on the
(41:50):
broken backs of those the British enslaved and soul. The
tyrants to which so many nations had fallen were the
British monarch and their agents. I just I just love that.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
You say so much in that and I didn't see it, folks.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I was ready to sing, but I I just but
that's I'm like, that's folks, that's just an excerpt of
what this book is about. It's like, you really, that's
a very powerful thing he's saying. It's like, and I
want I'm not gonna give it away for you because
that's just a really powerful part right there. I thought
I didn't expect that in a book like that, a thriller.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Well thank you. Well, it's interesting you choose that bit,
because the working title for the book for the longest
time was The Dread and the Envy.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Say that's a good name.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Maybe maybe for the sequel, but that was a line,
you know, that's that's a line from the hymn from
Rule Britannia, and it seemed to me to capture this
thing with that. Many of us, I know, the generalized
too far, but I think a lot of colonized people,
a lot of people who have been subject to imperialism
in whatever form too, imperial violence, whether from a colony,
(43:02):
a former colony, or descendants of slaves or native people
who have been you know, eradicated or partially eradicated by
imperialist power. We have this dual relationship in our generation
and the generations that have come, because there's much that
we envy. We envy the power of imperialism, we envy
the We may love the literature, we may love the language,
(43:25):
we may love large aspects of the culture, but we
also have reason to fear it. And that combination of
dread and envy, of desire and disgust, of anger and
joy is part of what it means to be. I
think a thinking person of color in today's world, and
(43:49):
a descendant of the colonized, or the victims or of history.
Not the victims ourselves, but the descendants of victims. And
I wanted to write about that tension. I love the
British canon, I love London. I love a lot about
(44:10):
the history. You know, one of the things I say
in the book's dedication is, you know, Churchill is a
character in the book, and I've always been obsessed to
a Churchill. But I think my obsession is sort of
sado masochistic, you know, I think he is. I agree.
He was a great man. He was the indispensable man
of the twentieth century. He was also a horrible racist,
(44:34):
and that was not incidental to his greatness. That was
part off his greatness, in that his greatness came out
of a conviction that he and his people were born
to rule the earth. And that is bizarre and interesting
(44:55):
and full of contradiction and therefore worth writing about and.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
For us, and this is and I agree with you.
We live a dual well, our lens, the lens in
which we live and see and view things about our
own countries as a person of color or an immigrant
or whatever words you want to use. But you're like,
I'm proud to be here. I'm here for a reason.
(45:22):
There's a reason, and we also acknowledge what's been done
kind of solid where someone who's maybe homogenized and from that,
it's part of that, you know what, I think about
it before, never really thought about it. But we kind of,
like you said, we're not saying we're victim, were just
saying that it's we know what the past was, we
(45:42):
know how things, we view things just dually. We just
just that's just right.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
It is a greater act to patriotism to love your
country knowing it's evil to love your country. I want
it to evolve away towards the more perfect union, away
from its its worst instincts, to love it blindly. Like
(46:09):
in a relationship, when you love someone blind to their faults,
we say your love blind, your love struck, You're you're
a fool in love. Real love, grown up love, seize
the person for all their flaws, all their imperfections, for
all their cruelties as well as all their good points,
(46:30):
and yeah, we have that relationship to our countries and
to the world and to the literature of the world.
Like this isn't a big political book. It's a small
political book because it says much about the literature of
imperialism as it is about imperialism.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I agree, I Arvin. I mean you're you're your best friend.
I just think you're amazing. We had a few snaps
try to get together. I cople things coming up, and
we finally I'm so glad we finally did this.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Back Annie any any any any anytime, and if you're
ever in La we've gotta have a drink or something.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Thank you, James. I really enjoyed this. I'll tell you
you're the your my in terms of the press tour
for this book, you're the first stop. So this was
me figuring out stuff. You're the first interview. It stops now.
I've got like two months of it books now, but
you are the first stop. So it's get in order
to stop this tour with you.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Thank you. Good luck to the others. No, I'm the
best folks.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
So okay, So when it's when this comes out, as
I'm releasing this, folks, the book will either be about
to come out or will be out. So you still
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
You will want to follow.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Him on Amazon at least go ahead and follow him
there for the Great Game. And also uh Barnes and Noble,
beyond Barnes and Noble, all your look of stuff. But
I also do this all the time to you. There
are a lot of folks. You don't believe somebody imperials
and stuff. Don't believe in the big box stores.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
This is what you do.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
You go to your local mom and pop bookstore. Go
to your local neighborhood bookstore. There's an ISBN number on
these books. You tell them to order it and bring
it to the bookstore and they will order it. More
chance than not they'll order it. You can bring the
book there and purchase it there. We want this book
to go to everyone, right.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Amen to that. Amen to that. You can also go
to bookshop dot org, which is a network of local bookstores,
and they will find it for you and get it
to you anyhow you get it, We're happy. Just go
get it paperback, paperback. Kendall and the Wonderful Audiobook James
will not be reading it, although he did a pretty
(48:38):
good job. Today. It's read by the wonderful subju Boscah,
So I hope you like it.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Follow as Arvinethandavid dot Cos his website. He's at Arvin
dot David on Instagram and follow me. Run at you
already is our Facebook's a blue sky at our r
v D.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
So follow them everywhere. Just do it.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
I told you, just do it. You won't be sorry.
And the great game is the book. I'm James Jora
Pages on Facebook. We believe in books. We believe in
authors of all races and sizes and shapes.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Uh here reading is.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
We don't. We don't believe in band books. You don't
believe in hiding people. It's it's you have choices, and
we want to help with these choices. There's a lot
of great stories out there that are being told and
we want to say and I personally want to support that.
I've been James EU Junior everywhere, of course, and we'll
see you next time.
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