Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For October that debut is Translations by Jumaana Abdu (Penguin Random House). Translations is a beautifully moving novel following the lives of Aliyah, her daughter Sakina, and her friend friend Hana as they grapple with a series of personal disasters while bushfires rage around them in rural New South Wales.
Can you tell us about your journey to publication?
I started writing Translations in 2021 when I was in my fifth year of medical school. I submitted it, sort of on a whim, after I had written the majority of the manuscript to The Next Chapter Fellowship run by the Wheeler Centre. I was very shocked to find out I got a place and was even more shocked to find out that I would be mentored by Hannah Kent for the following year. We went through major structural edits together and then eventually worked on the novel at a line level, working to integrate theme and a subconscious sense of continuity throughout the novel. It was a really special experience.
Then I was linked up with Pippa Masson at Curtin Brown, who sent it out to a whole range of publishers, and I was very lucky to land my absolute dream publisher, Vintage [imprint of Penguin Random House]. I worked with Meredith Curnow and the brilliant Mel Lane who was my copyeditor for a year after that.
So that’s been about a three-year process and now we’re here!
Setting plays an interesting role in Translations. What made you decide to set the novel in rural New South Wales?
I think, especially post-pandemic, the idea of fleeing the city and setting up one’s own stake in an idyllic countryside town has been fairly romanticised. I wanted to lean into that trope—a stranger coming to a new town, to an old house with a complicated history—and then subvert it by asking what responsibility does she have to acknowledge the history of the town and the house that she’s in and how does she tangibly fulfil that responsibility?
Congratulations on winning the Dal Stivens Award in 2023! What advice would you give to writers thinking of entering the prize?
The Dal Stivens Award is given to what the judges think is the highest quality piece of published literature [short story or essay by an author, aged 30 or under] in the previous year. They consider non-fiction as well as fiction. The only advice I have really is to read as much as possible, write as much as possible, submit everywhere and get used to having 90% rejection. If there was some kind of shortcut to it, I would have a Pulitzer Prize by now!
You also have an incredible story in our latest anthology New Australian Fiction 2024. Does your writing practice differ between short fiction and longform fiction?
For me, short stories are a much more potent pill. I try and pack a punch as sharply—and sometimes as vindictively—as I can. I start with a very extreme premise, sometimes an illogical one, almost like a science experiment with an absurd hypothesis. Then I work as viciously as I can towards its logical end.
With longer form, like my novel, I enjoy working within extremes. So, moderating extremes and really teasing out every possible declension of a theory. I also try to be a bit more generous and tender and even generative in my understanding of the human experience. Whereas with my short stories, I don’t mind slapping the reader about a bit.
There’s a beautiful friendship between two women at the heart of this book. What are some of your favourite books centred on friendship?
Three of my favourite novels are about friendship. The first one is My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and the entire Neapolitan quartet. It is one of the most brilliant novels of the century. From a friendship perspective, it’s full of all the jealously, fear, envy, admiration and infatuation that female friendships can contain, just like any adult relationship.
Another book that’s similar to that is Passing by Nella Larsen, which is about two white-passing black women in pre-Civil Rights era America and the mires of identity, but also, on a personal level, the sense of repulsion and interest that they have in one another from their early childhood years all the way up into adulthood and the interplay of class, race and gender in those attractions and repulsions.
Finally, the most unconventional friendship of the three, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, which follows two unlikely companions as they become political fugitives and end up on this hundred-page long sequence where they’re fleeing across a barren ice tundra. Within that absolute barrenness, they share one of the most profound labours towards translation and connection between two truly alien beings that I have ever read in literature. It was a huge influence on Translations.
You can pick up a copy of Translations at your local bookstore today.
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