Gillian Slovo Meet the Author

Now on BBC News, we talk to Gillian Slovo in meet the author.

Ten days in London, travel industry -- Street, putting, buildings on

fire and a creeping sense of chaos. And on top of that, the government,

breeze and corruption. Gillian Slovo's new thriller, ten days, paid

equally picture of the city and its politics. No one ever seems to know

what is really going on. Welcome. It is a very dark story that you

have written. There's not much hope there, is there? It is a story in

hotly about the state of our nation and a story about modern politics

and I think it is not a lot of hope at the moment. It has sprung from

your experience of the troubles, The Riots in Tottenham particularly in

London and 2011. The created a plea from forbidden conversations that

you have people who were involved. Did this book really spring from

that experience? It did in a kind of a way because I was lucky enough to

do the verbatim play on The Riots and I say lucky, because I watch The

Riots like many people dead and I sat there thinking, what on earth is

going on? Why are people doing this? Why is it spreading? And what the

play gave me was the ability to call and ask a huge number of people,

people who had been part of the original demonstration in Tottenham,

writers, breeze, riot breeze, which was fascinating to talk to them, and

politicians, about what was going on. And what it gave me for the

book, although this book starts with the rioters is not about the 2011

riots, it gave me the confidence to be able to write myself into a riot.

What you think it is like to be there? Some of people called me in

Tottenham when it first broke out and before they started hitting the

shops and burning buildings, was that there was a feeling of being in

a carnival. Because there were all these people who were brought

together in a protest but then it suddenly turn into something else

and there was no police to control it. When it became more serious,

some people became worried that people would be hurt and try to do

something about it and some people got carried away in the joy of

breaking rules. And then of course there was the experience of the

police who are in the middle of a crowd which either wants to break

into shops or burned buildings, or actually wants to hurt them. And in

the book, there is a sense of how difficult it is for police officers

who are trying to do a decent job. And not make things worse. It is an

exceptionally difficult role to fulfil and it is very easy to get

things wrong. I think that is clear, and I think it is very scary to be a

police officer in a riot. Because not only are you worrying about your

own officers and what is going to happen to them, because things can

go badly wrong, but you're also worrying about the community which

are both trying to protect and to prevent from doing anything illegal.

Another aspect of the book which dominates much of the story and we

are not going to give too much away, it is set in the world of politics.

At the higher reaches of government, whether is a Home Secretary and

Prime Minister at loggerheads. What strikes me about this is that there

are relatively few people in the political firmament who become main

characters in the study but they are all pretty awful. I mean they are

either corrupt or venal in some way, certainly self obsessed. You don't

seem to have much time for anyone in politics who might actually have

some truism working away at the heart of the ambitious pursuit of

power. I do if they do have it, but in my book, what I was partly

writing about was the pursuit of power and I think, anyway, it is not

just the politicians but there is a commissioner of police who I have

the right to have considerable amount of sympathy with. But what I

was writing about is when you are in the position, what the compromises

of power force you into doing. You might start off with good intentions

and end up doing something that you would think he would never do and

what Ten Days is partly about is how the political game happens at that

metalevel and how also a impact of what many people. That is really

what I was writing about. You are a writer with a dramatic background.

Your father was a famous figure in the anti-apartheid movement, led the

South African Commies party for many years. Your mother was killed in the

1980s in Mozambique in an awful episode. You came to this country in

the 60s and live with the memory of that divided five country. In a way

that I suppose inevitably has never left you. It hasn't, really, and I

think I have also lived with an understanding of how big politics

can interact with ordinary people because in a way my early life was

completely determined. What happened was completely determined by what

was happening in South Africa, by what the apartheid regime were doing

about the choices that my parents made, so I think I have a very big

consciousness that although we think we are living just ordinarily a life

that have nothing to do with what is happening the political, actually

most of what is happening to us is affected by that and that is why I

am interested in writing about that. The paradox is that although the two

things affect each other, there is in this book a huge gap between the

people on the top and the people in the streets. And I feel living in

London that this is what I experienced daily, I get on the tube

and I look around me and I think we are all sharing the same space and

we seem to be living in the same world but we actually have very

different lives. The thing it is as bad as that? , I think it is as

extreme as that. Depending on what your job and education is, what

circumstances are very housing is and how much money you have

determined how you live your life. This is a story, it is not a

political tract. I don't want to Doctor much about the plot because

it would give away things that might spoil peoples enjoyment, but I

wonder if there is anything in this book that you think gives us hope. I

think there is hope in certain human relationships in the book and

particularly in the character of Cathy who lives in this really quite

desperate community. The first character we meet in the book. Yes

and she is trying as a mother could do her best by her daughter and

tried to do the death by her neighbour, and a kid called Jade and

who has a mother who is not capable of looking after him, and I think

the hope was out in that, in the ability of ordinary people to build

the life matter how difficult the circumstances. Did you enjoy writing

it? I did, I like a book that is a patron, I like a strong narrative,

and so it was a pleasure to me. When I started writing I wrote crime and

then I have stopped writing it for a long time and to be able to turn to

write a seller like ten days was very enjoyable and also technically

difficult because what I have learned is that if you want the

reader to turn the page over as if there is no pause between what is

happening then you really have to work hard to get that to work. It is

not easy. Thank you very much.