>> Lucy Caldwell‘s second book, The Meeting Point, has been one of my favourite finds of this year. And it’s not just me either – last month it beat the likes of Tea Obreht to the Dylan Thomas Prize, the judges calling it “a beautifully written and mature reflection on identity, loyalty and belief in a complex world”. Ultimately, it’s a compelling story rather than a portrait – it’s about ex-pats and “Middle Easterners” trying to navigate their way through not just faith, but life, in Bahrain.
So it was a great pleasure to meet up with Lucy in the typical Bahraini surroundings… of the Kentish Town Canteen in London. I was really impressed by her attention to detail in the book, and as she got out some photos of Bahrain just moments after we’d greeted each other, I knew that she’d done her homework…
“I wrote it in Whitechapel, where you can hear the muezzin from the East London Mosque. There were Bengali kids running around my street, so I would talk to their mothers. I went to the mosque and I studied Islam. I think you have to if you’re going to write a book like this.”
Click here for the full interview with Lucy Caldwell in The National
