Later in the year I’ll be bringing you an A-Z of THE
MADAGASKAR PLAN which, like its predecessor, will give a ‘behind the scenes’
insight to the writing of the book. In the meantime I’m going to sneak in the
letter E.
I never write ‘The End’ when I finish a book. I’ve always
found it rather juvenile (with apologies to all those writers who do). I also think
it inaccurate. A novel doesn’t end just because you finish putting the words
down on the page. An author can revisit their work (and here I must admit I’m
still tinkering with the text of The Afrika
Reich; the definitive version of which is not the paperback but the one on
my computer.) A book also develops a life of its own once it’s published and
readers begin to make it theirs. If it stays around long enough, different
generations of readers will interpret it in different ways. ‘The End’ sounds presumptive,
and far too final.
Nevertheless, Madagaskar
is at last finished. I’ve checked the proofs, made my final alterations, and
from this point to publication I can no longer make any substantial changes to
the text. I require something to mark the moment and tell my publisher that I’m
done.
When I worked as a foreign correspondent, I needed a similar
word to signify an article had reached its final paragraph. This was especially
true when I was filing from some dodgy country abroad in those days of more
primitive telecommunications, when articles were sometimes cut short in
transmission. The word I was advised to use was ‘ends’. There’s something about
the present tense of the verb with its double connotation of conclusion and
continuation that seems ideally suited for being the very last word in a manuscript.
I’ve always used it for my books. It seems appropriate today.
E is also for Epic
I’ve written before how I planned [geddit?] to do something
different with Madagaskar. One of the
qualities I wanted was a much bigger feel than the first book. To give it a truly
epic sweep. To that end it’s meatier than the original in both the physical
sense - it’s almost 100 pages longer – and in terms of content which sees six
interweaving narrative strands, much more world building and a story that will take
you from Britain to Africa (Kongo, Sudan, Deutsch Ost Afrika, Mozambique), to
Madagaskar and finally the heart of the Reich and Germania itself.
Intriguingly, if you look at this Wikipedia entry and its
list of ten characteristics of the epic, Madagaskar uses all but numbers 3 (evocation
of the muse), 5 (epithets) and 6 (epic catalogue):
