SPEAKING WITH ANN BENNETT

Your book offers a wonderful story using captivating elements: history, mystery, and romance.

.I’d like to begin with the narrative’s point-of-view: Devisha, creating a magical spiritual atmosphere; Chloe in 2015, discovering her grandmother’s wartime diary; and Lena (1944) recounting her own experiences during the war. Have you used this narrative technique in your previous work?
Yes, nearly all my books involve a dual or triple timeline. I started this with Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, my first novel, which tells the story of a soldier imprisoned by the Japanese on the Death Railway, and his daughter in the 1980s trying to uncover his story. The book swaps between the soldier’s backstory in Penang in the 1930s, his time on the Death Railway, and his daughter’s journey in the 1980s. All my books follow a similar pattern. Some involve three characters, others two and in some I have a single character looking back over her own past.

.It was impressive how smoothly you shifted from Lena’s diary entries in first-person to third-person. Did you have prior experience using this in your previous work? Do you know of any previous instances where this has been done?
This is the first time I’ve used that particular technique. In several books I have written complete diary entries, and in the first draft of the Fortune Teller I started by doing that. However, it didn’t work very well. The diary form didn’t lend itself to the sort of detail I needed to include, so I rewrote Lena’s story completely, putting it into the third person and just including a small introductory entry from the diary in each chapter. I don’t know of instances by other authors, but I’m sure there must be some.

Most of your books take place during World War II. What is your interest in this specific era of history?
My father served in the British-Indian army in the Malaya campaign, was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore and was a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma railway. He died when I was seven, so growing up I became fascinated in his story and began to research as much as I could about that campaign and the plight of prisoners of war. I discovered his records in the National Archives in 2010 and my first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest was inspired by his experiences. That led me to delve deeper into the war in South-East Asia and research different aspects of it. Most of my subsequent books are set during the war in SE Asia, relating the experiences of different people affected in different ways by the conflict.
However, I have also written about British India during the 1930s, Germany and France during WW2 and also London during the Blitz.

Your book enlightened me about the historical specifics of the India-Japan war. It captivated me completely. What led you to discover this?
Finding out about the Burma campaign was an extension of my original research as outlined above. I wrote about it in The Tea Planter’s Club, which tells the story of a woman who has to escape the fighting in Burma by walking through the mountains to Assam with her baby. After that I wrote The Lake Palace, about a nurse who worked in a field hospital behind the front line at Kohima and Imphal during the Burma campaign. During research for those books I stumbled across the story of the Wasbies, and decided I would write about that too one day.

This brings me to the discovery of the Wasbies, also known as the Women’s Auxiliary Service in Burma. How did you come across their service? What was the reasoning behind including it as one of Lena’s experiences?
I think I’ve answered that partly in my above answer. I stumbled across the Wasbies when I was researching the Burma campaign for other books. I was interested in the roles that women played in the war. There were very few women at the front line apart from nurses. I found it fascinating how the simple act of serving tea and cakes to soldiers could have had such a profound effect on their morale. I read a diary of a Wasbie ‘Frontline and Fortitude’ which brought home to me the bravery, strength and camaraderie of those women who were prepared to put themselves in danger to support the troops.

Your novel is a captivating blend of romance, adventure, and mystery. Which do you like better, when the romance is the main focus and the mystery is secondary? Maintaining parallelism between the two areas is a challenge for authors. How do you approach it?
This is difficult to answer because I don’t necessarily separate them like that in my mind. I like to read page-turners myself so really try to make my plots fast-moving, complex and surprising. That involves blending mystery and adventure in equal measure. And I also love to include a love story to invest readers in the characters’ journeys. However, I wouldn’t necessarily write either an adventure, mystery or romance without the other elements too. I think the way they come together in a book is down to planning, editing and rewriting if things don’t work the first time.

I’m curious, do you extensively outline before, during, or after completing the first draft of a novel?
Yes, I plan very carefully. I draw up a high-level outline and tweak it until I’m satisfied, then I write a chapter plan and try to follow that when I write. However, I often find myself departing from the chapter plan because interesting plot-twists come to me as I write.

.Your reviews often mention that your depictions of Napal are so realistic that readers could use your book as a travel guide. How familiar are you with this specific area of the world?
I have been to Nepal twice. Once in 1988 as part of a much longer journey, when I spent time in Pokhara, Kathmandu and trekked to Ghorepani as the characters do in my book. I wrote a diary on that trip, which I drew on extensively whilst writing the book. I returned last year while I was writing it, spending time in Kathmandu and Pokhara and did the same trek (much harder now than when I was in my twenties, and a lot has changed). I also spent a couple of weeks in Darjeeling and Kolkata in 2019. I loved Darjeeling – the beauty, the atmosphere and the people - and thought it would make a perfect setting for a book. 

What is the desired takeaway for readers after finishing this book?
I hope that readers are able to escape into a different world when they read The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, and that the book brings that world alive for them. I would also like people to understand about the hardships experienced by so many during the war and that a lot of ordinary, unsung people, like Lena and Billy made huge sacrifices for the sake of others. I also hope they remember Lena, her strength and her bravery and her desire to be true to herself and to those she loved.

Working on the next? Tell us more.
Since writing The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, I have published another book, A Rose in the Blitz. It tells the story of May Rose, a nurse with the ambulance corps in London during WW2, and her daughter Rachel, to whom May tells her story years later, and who goes on to uncover various explosive family secrets.
I have also written two books about WW2 set in Germany for my publisher, Bookouture, which are about women and families affected by the Nazi’s Lebensborn programme. The first of these, The Orphan List, will be published on August 15th 2024, the second will be published in November.
I am currently working on another book set during WW2 in South-East Asia, this time focusing on Pearl Harbor and the war in the Philippines. That one is called The Lotus House. I’m not sure on a publication date for that one yet, perhaps either October 2024 or January next year.   
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