Hello
Soniah and welcome to My Jane Austen Book Club. Thanks for accepting my
invitation! My first question for you is, when was your first encounter with
Jane Austen and what was it like? How did the idea of writing Unmarriageable
come to your mind?
Thank you so much for inviting me. When I was around fourteen years
old, my Aunt Helen gifted me a gorgeous red and gold hardback copy of Pride
and Prejudice. I remember skimming through it, mesmerized by the
illustrations. I finally read it cover to cover when I was sixteen and promised
myself then and there that I would do a retelling set in Pakistan. Growing up there
were no novels in English set in Pakistan and so I’d just grown used to imaging
everything I read terms of my miliue. I find it interesting that the desire to
do a parellel retelling of Pride and Prejudice stayed with me versus any
other book.
Was it difficult
to blend a story originally set in Regency England with a modern-day Pakistani
context?
No and Yes. No beause
Austen’s was a patriachal culture as is Pakistan’s to this day. I think one of
the reasons Unmarriageable resonates so
strongly with women everywhere is because they intuitively understand the
constraints of living under ‘a man is more important and knows best.” Also, the morals and manners of Regency
England such as maintaining a good repuation and landing a great catch is still
very much the expectation in Pakistan, although, thankfully, the world has
opened up for Pakstani women on career options and divorce is no longer the
great stigma is used to be.
Yes because
mirroring some of the plot points was very challenging. For instance, Netherfield
Park is a house the Bingelys rent and one which Jane Bennet stays at after she
catches cold, and where a ball is thrown. In Unmarriagable I needed an equivalent setting, however a house did
not make sense. Turning Netherfield Park into Unmarriageable’s multi
event wedding, called NadirFiede, by joining together the names of the
couple getting married (Nadir Sheh and Fiede Fecker), was a huge bingo moment.
