Author Interview Thomas Keneally His labour of love n Australian novelist Thomas Keneallys best known work, Schindlers Ark [made into the film Schindlers List], a corrupt German industrialist saves hundreds of Jews from the gas chambers. His new novel, The Peoples Train, is equally fascinated by the relationship between individuals on the margins and grand historical events. All novelists feel themselves to be marginal, the septuagenarian Booker Prize winner explains. The more they write, the more solitary they are, the more theyre able to convince themselves, Im just someone out here on the periphery, no-one will read my book. Its unlikely though the author of Irish descent will face that problem with The Peoples Train. Its the story of an escapee from Tsarist Russia, Artem Tom Samsurov, who arrives in Australia in 1911 convinced the country is a working mans paradise. The first half takes the form of Artems memoir of his six years living in Brisbanes Russian expat community. A committed Bolshevik, he helps to unionise the railways, though his efforts see him imprisoned on a trumped-up murder charge. He also falls in love (and has an adulterous affair) with a local lawyer, Hope Mockridge, who shares his radical impulses. Part Two is narrated by Paddy Dykes, an Australian journalist who accompanies Artem back to Russia in 1917 and witnesses the Revolution up I close. The titular train is a monorail which one of the Russian expats is trying to develop, but it quickly becomes a symbol for the unstoppable social change Artem and his comrades wish to bring about. An epigraph tells us he is a late hero of the Soviet Revolution. Keneally intends to cover the circumstances of his death in a sequel. Like the protagonist in Schindlers Ark, Artem is loosely based on a real person, Artem Sergeyev, whom Keneally read about in the work of a pair of Queensland-based academics. He was amazed that a place like Brisbane should have been a hotbed of hardcore Marxism. Its a tropical backwater! he laughs. Among frangipani and jacaranda trees one would not have expected to find a nest of Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Agrarian Socialists and what have you. But there was a tension between pursuing revolution and the more Australian maana culture the typical Australian tendency to accept small increments of improvement instead of attempting to overthrow the system. The most entertaining chapters diversionary flashbacks, packed with incident follow Artem and his friend Suvarovs escape route from Siberia to Brisbane via Japan and Shanghai, where they work for a time delivering bread for a Russian bakery. But the overall impression left by The Peoples Train is of the incredible seriousness and intellectual ardour of early- 20th-century labour movements. I was raised as a Catholic and dogma took up my entire universe for a time, says Keneally. So I understand the way Marxism was their Sun and their Moon and attracted a theological fervour. Pre-Revolution, Marxism looked like a perfectly rational system if you didnt know that there was a certain political prisoner called Koba [Stalin] on the ascendancy... Born in Sydney into a working-class Irish family, Keneally and his novels such as 1972s The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith about a mixed-race Aborigine have always been concerned with oppressed figures and the ethnic diversity of todays Australia thrills him. When I was growing up, Australia was made up of working-class British. Since World War II its become more and more an outpost of the Balkans, the Baltic states, Holland, Italy, Greece. Astonishingly, The Peoples Train is Keneallys 39th book. Im 73 and I should slow down, he admits. Im long past the illusion that the world needs my books. Im the one who needs to produce them! I hope the passion has not yet died that I never have to go on the literary version of Viagra! The Peoples Train is published by Sceptre, priced 21 Marxism looked like a perfectly rational system if you didnt know that there was a certain political prisoner called Koba [Stalin] on the ascendancy... The Schindlers Ark author tells John OConnell about his new book chronicling history from the viewpoint of people on the margins Five questions for... Philip Boucher-Hayes, co-author of Basket Case: Whats Happening to Irelands Food? In Town Tonight We Love Dancing In The Dark An eclectic line-up of emerging musicians and groups including Villagers, Skinny Wolves, Mic Maximum Joy Durnin, Peter Brainbeat Toomey and Jouissance. Proceeds go to the Simon Community Tonight, Spiegeltent, Georges Dock, IFSC D1, 9.30pm, 16. Tel: 1850 374 643. www.fringefest.com Pregnant?! Performance lecture delivered by a pregnant man (London-based Mamoru Iriguchi, pictured) tracing his existence from his mothers womb to the stage with the aid of original animated projections, balloons and a lot of 2-D bunnies Until Sat, Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street D2, 9pm, 20 to 22. Tel: 1850 374 643. www.fringefest.com Group Therapy For One Tongue-in-cheek tale of 20-year- old Shane who holds an inquest into his life from the comfort of his family home, where his blustering father and soft-hearted mother confide in the audience about their son Until Sat, meet at OConnell Bridge D1, 6.45pm, 9 to 11. Tel: 1850 374 643. www.fringefest.com metro Arts & Entertainment life Book Now DJ Yoda His cutnpaste mash-ups now a thing of legend, DJ Yoda returns with all the bells and whistles of his National Video Vacation Tour that splices together cartoon clips, TV theme tunes, movie dialogue and comedy skits aurally and visually. No stranger to combining audio and visual elements last years Magic Cinema Show tour featured film footage the British renegade mixmaster will this time mingle YouTube clips, retro computer games, rap videos, South Park and, er, wrestling while he mixes and scratches hip-hop, funk, swing, country and western. Our very own DJ Kormac oh-so-congruously supports Oct 2, Twisted Pepper, 54 Middle Abbey Street D1, 8pm, 15 to 20. Tel: 0818 719 300. www.djyoda.co.uk 12 metrolife Thursday, September 17, 2009 the hottest tickets in town We have two pairs of tickets to see DJ YODA Oct 2 at Twisted Pepper, 8pm For a chance to win, e-mail your answer to the question below to life@metroireland.ie by noon today with Hot Tickets in the subject line. With your answer please include your name, address and a number where you can be contacted between 1pm and 3pm. Strictly one entry per person; entrants must be age 18+. Q. What is the generic name of Yodas mix tapes? A. How To Cut & Paste B. How To Copy & Paste The winners of yesterdays tickets to see Melody Gardot are: Kate Quane, Virgil Hammond & Steven Bergen What is your biggest, er, beef in the book [co-authored with wife Suzanne Campbell, pictured]? We look at how we changed as a culture through the food we ate; how we went from being able to prepare a meal for ourselves to being completely dependent on supermarkets to do everything for us. Did we lose our inner culchie after a decade of trying to be flash Paddies? What does the transition from you could put a bit of butter on the spuds there, Andr to eating chilled mussel velout and caviar daquitaine in a sea orchid foam say about us? Our pet peeve, though, is probably people who think that watching Jamie Oliver means that they know how tough it is to produce food. Not everyone can afford to shop at farmers markets or has a garden to grow their own herbs or vegetables in, especially during a recession. How realistic is it to expect poverty-line families to swap their potato waffles for proper homegrown potatoes? The greatest trick the supermarkets ever pulled was to convince us processed food is cheaper than the real thing. Try shopping on your main street, youll be surprised at the good value to be found, and youll be helping support Irish jobs. Local suppliers and local food is the best way out of the recession. Would this book have been written or published during the boom years or is it only in retrospect that we can afford to be critical of our overindulgence? We started writing Basket Case in 2007 as a critique of the boom but then had to start re-writing as Bertienomics became Namanomics. And its a better book for it because now we all know we went a bit flaithilach and this is a good time to take stock. If we are what we eat, what are you? Part home-grown green salad, part Suzannes oatmeal flapjacks. What was the last naughty foodstuff you ate? And on a scale of one to ten, how dirty did you feel afterwards? A very large chicken barbecue pizza. If ten is as dirty as a bin-man at the end of an eight-hour shift, we felt like a pretty filthy nine. Nobody does the right thing all the time, and dont believe anybody who says that they do. Our book is not a utopian manifesto telling you how to live your life. Were taking a look at Ireland through the prism of food how we have changed it and how it has changed us. Lucy White Basket Case (Gill & Macmillan, 17) is out now index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html24.html25.html26.html27.html