Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Son of Sin by Omar Sakr (Affirm Press), a multifaceted tale brimming with angels and djinn, racist kangaroos and adoring bats, examining with a poet’s eye the destructive impetus of repressed desire and the complexities that make us human.

Our theme song is Broke for Free’s ‘Something Elated’. Sound production by Nial Hosken.

Further reading:

Read Ellen Cregan’s review of Son of Sin in our March Books Roundup.

Read about Omar’s favourite books and reading habits in this month’s Shelf Reflection.

Son of Sin is available now from your local independent bookseller.

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Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice!

TRANSCRIPT

Ellen Cregan: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings podcast. I’m First Book Club host Ellen Cregan. Our pick for this month is Son of Sin by Omar Sakr, out now from Affirm press. Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses and The Lost Arabs. Born to Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants in Western Sydney, he lives there still. His first novel, Son of Sin, is a fierce debut that illuminates the bonds that bind families together, as well as what can break them. Jamal Smith is a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the dark. Torn between faith and fear, gossip and gospel, family and friendship, Jamal must find and test the limits of love. I spoke with Omar about moving from poetry to prose, translating personal experience into fiction, and the Western Sydney writing community. Hey, Omar, thanks for joining me today.

Omar Sakr: Thanks for having me.

Ellen Cregan: We’re just going to get started with a reading from the book, whenever you’re ready.

Omar Sakr:

It never failed to surprise Jamal how completely the outside world vanished even a metre into a canopied sky. The trees were enormous, the ground uneven and soft, treacherous in its gorgeous weft of leaf and mud, hiding loose rocks and thick roots. They had learned to tread carefully, but still fell often, muddying their pants and hands. The creek patterned the dappled dark with its wet music, accompanied by insect chirps and the call of birds. Emir was ahead, whacking a stick in lazy arcs at the ground, following what passed for a track.

Watch it, Jamal said, as he came within range of the stick.

Emir whirled, pentagram necklace bouncing. En garde!

Nah, Jamal said, and Emi deflated with a sigh. I’m fucking bored, he said and threw the stick into the bush. They walked further in together, talk turning to Ilo’s upcoming birthday, their plan to get him the DVD boxset of Inuyasha. The tree line deepened around them, the slope up to the courts becoming steeper, and as they turned, it felt as if they were being cupped by the joined hands of the earth. The distant shouts of boys reached them. Their time here was almost up.

Ugh, Emir sald, kicking at the dirt. Cart wait for this year to be over.

Why wait? Jamal said. It’s not like you have to finish.

He got an angry look back. The rents would kill me, that’s why.

Maybe that was true, or maybe, like Jamal, Emir felt the end approaching and wanted to hold on for as long as possible. They stopped as the path opened into a huge green grove crammed with the layered chittering of flying foxes in their hundreds. According to the warning signs they’d ignored, this was a reserve, a restricted area because they were a protected species. They looked and sounded like bats to him, and Jamal wasn’t sure what the difference was between them, if any.

Fruity fucks, Emir said, following his eyes up to the colony.

I know you are but what am I? Jamal said, and Emir elbowed him in the side. They stood there for a moment, looking at the small dark creatures, the thunder of their living, their joyous consumption.

Must be nice, Jamal said.

What?

To be a protected species, he said. If only we were.

Emir grinned a sweet crooked grin. Yeah, then we could stay here forever.

Ellen Cregan: Thank you, Omar. That was beautiful. Very theatrical, I loved it.

Omar Sakr: (Laughs) Ah, thanks.

Ellen Cregan: I also love calling an animal a fruity fuck, like that will never not be hilarious. (Laughs) So for those listening who haven’t had a chance to read your book yet, can you give us a brief summary of Son of Sin?

Omar Sakr: Yeah, Son of Sin is a coming of age novel centred on the life of Jamal Smith, a young queer Arab Muslim growing up in Western Sydney, and his attempts to reconcile his faith with his sexuality.

Ellen Cregan: So what made you want to write a story like this, particularly Jamal’s story? Because he’s a really strong character, he’s a really loveable character. Where did he sort of come from?

Omar Sakr: Well, I’m glad that you see him as loveable. (Both laugh)

Ellen Cregan: Imperfect, but lovable.

Omar Sakr: Ah, yeah, look, this is a story very much based on my life, and I wanted to write it to, yeah, showcase lived experiences that I haven’t seen in our literature.

Ellen Cregan: And with it being such a personal story, or something that you’ve drawn quite heavily from your own life for, what was the process like of coming to the point of publication, like working with editors, and, I suppose, even like marketing people and publicity people, on something that is so deeply personal? How was that?

Omar Sakr: It’s always really difficult, um, letting other people into your life, whether that is in the form of published writing, or in any other way, and that is what I’m always doing, right, I’m trying to let people into my life in the hope that what they see and find there is of use, particularly for queer, Arab and/or Muslim readers, you know, I hope that I can create something in language that makes them feel more at home in this world. And it’s hard to have this kind of external group of people coming in and saying, what about this? What if we do this? And, um—but, in saying that, I have a really great publisher and I’ve been really allowed to do what I want with this, they’ve just backed me every step of the way. So it’s been a really wonderful process.

Ellen Cregan: So tell me to shut up if this is too much of a sidetrack, but I actually wanted to ask you about the cover of the book, because it is a gorgeous, gorgeous cover. Did you have much input into that? Do you kind of, does that have a story at all?

Omar Sakr: The cover is by Amy Daoud, and I didn’t design it, I didn’t have any input, really, there, aside—I got some concepts, and that was the one that immediately stood out. And really there’s not much story, you know—I had some feedback for it, but nah, like, mostly it’s just her excellence. (Laughs).

Ellen Cregan: Well, I think it just, it really suits the book, which you would hope that most books have a cover that really suits the insides, but I don’t think that happens as much as we would like. And I just felt like this cover just, I don’t know, something about it. It almost has a kind of epic feel to it, which this book definitely has that sort of epic coming-of-age vibe to it.

Omar Sakr: Thank you.

Ellen Cregan: So Jamal exists in between quite a few conflicts in his life. Like, he comes from a pretty tumultuous home life, his parents kind of hate each other. He’s sort of in between the secular and religious family existence and of course, between his same sex desire and the homophobia of the world around him. How do you approach writing a character who’s at a crossroads like this, or is so fractured in so many ways?

Omar Sakr: Yeah. Um… I think if it weren’t such a reflection of my own experiences, then that would have been a struggle, right. Like, I wouldn’t know how to handle it if I had been coming at it from an outside perspective. But this was my upbringing in many ways. And I know these people, and I’ve lived in this… kind of constant state of negotiation. And so I don’t know necessarily that I would call it a fracturing or even a series of conflicts, because conflict, as we are often kind of taught to think of them, are resolvable. They’re fixed points. And I don’t think, that’s not necessarily what I was trying to do. I just wanted to…I wanted to bring this life to the page and show you over time what damage can do, and damage coming from violence at an interpersonal level, damage coming from systemic forces that are at work in society.

Ellen Cregan: I think that is a really great explanation of how this character is. And something that I found so well expressed in this book, and also so heartbreaking was the secrecy that you, that is just present. So the secrecy about his sort of sexuality, and the encounters that he has, especially when younger—Jamal is just kind of like, hearing people say these things that are really an attack to his existence, and just kind of being silent. And that is so heartbreaking, and obviously a reality for queer people everywhere.

Omar Sakr: Yeah. And I think it’s a really important point because speaking back to silence is really, like at the heart of this work. And it’s one of the reasons even I didn’t put speech tags on the dialogue. It’s one of the reasons—a lot of the more important moments are delivered via text and not spoken, because this is a character who has grown up in a culture that demands his silence, and—multiple cultures, the Australian mainstream culture and also the Arab Muslim culture, where there’s a strong sense of hierarchy, and you know, you are not meant to speak back to your elders ever. And yeah, I hope I succeeded in showing all the ways in which silence warps a life.

Ellen Cregan: I think you captured that super well. Like, that definitely is something that comes up multiple times throughout, very visibly. So I wanted to ask you about your writing more broadly, so a lot of our listeners will know you as a poet. What did you bring from your poetry practice to writing this longer work, Son of Sin?

Omar Sakr: Yeah, I—poetry taught me everything I know about writing. I was… it taught me to honour the way I think and the things that I feel, and that if I can just pay enough attention to the shape and sound of those thoughts and those feelings, then I will create literature that will resonate with people. And that’s really what I did here, I just carried that with me into prose.

Ellen Cregan: So would you say this was a very intuitive process of writing a novel? I’m always so interested about whether authors are that really intuitive, you’re led by the story and by the words, from what it sounds like you’re saying, or whether you’ve got, like, the 150 Post-it notes out, that always fascinates me.

Omar Sakr: No Post-it notes, no planning, no, none of that. Ah, yeah, no, I just kind of sit down and write and follow it as far as I can follow it—which, for someone with ADHD, you know, previously, writing anything long form is, like, incredibly difficult. And actually, like, the start of this process forced me to kind of confront my own limits. And so actually, that’s what got me to finally, after many years of wanting to, finally get checked, go through the process of seeing a psychiatrist and getting diagnosed with ADHD and getting medication. And yeah, without that, I don’t know if I could have finished the book, because I couldn’t follow the thoughts as far as I wanted to, I couldn’t stick with them. This has always been a problem—with poetry it’s great, because you really want that quick sudden shift, that leap, that intuitive kind of magic. And with prose, it’s so much slower. It doesn’t always need to be, but generally it’s so much slower and you want to follow it for as long as you can, to get into the depths that you need to. So yeah, there was that part of it that was really integral. But no, otherwise I don’t plan or plot or do any of those things.

Ellen Cregan: Do you think that there’s something that you’ve learnt from this process of writing a much longer work, that you might bring to your poetry practice? Like whether it will change, as we were just saying before, the sort of, the rush of writing poetry, whether you’ll be able to take something from this longer project and maybe change your approach to poetry?

Omar Sakr: Nah. (Both laugh). Short answer is no.

Ellen Cregan: That is fair enough. (Laughs)

Omar Sakr: But I will say that I’ve been working on my third poetry collection over the past six months, and they are generally much shorter poems. So there may be just a fatigue element that’s come in, where I’ve just been like, nup, like, you don’t need all these words, like, cut it out. But I don’t think that that’s necessarily something that’s going to be true for all poems, or that’s going to be a long term change for me. You know, I think it maybe had an impact in the very short term.

Ellen Cregan: So one of the main characteristics of this book, in my opinion, is the poetry of it. So, like, on a line-to-line level, this is such a beautifully written book, and it’s almost like, quite ornate in the way that it’s written. And there’s still a plot and it’s still this story, this development of this character through the whole book. But it’s just so lovely in the sense of just the words. How do you sort of balance the beauty of the prose, and that real, like, line to line gorgeousness, while still having this overarching story and not getting lost? Because I don’t think you do get lost in the language.

Omar Sakr: First of all, thank you so much. (Both laugh). That makes me very, very happy. Yeah. I think…hmm. I think that I’m definitely…man, I don’t even… I love the word ornate, and I love that there is this lushness, this richness in the work that you’ve recognised, because that is very much a quality of my life. And you know, it’s like, you go out into, you go out of your house to school with the weatherboard demountables, and into this kind of, like, drab experience, and then you go home and it’s just this explosion of colour and flavour. And Arabic culture is quite ornate in many ways, lots of tapestries of gold threads. And I think that that’s why my own voice hews to that style. But at the same time, there is also just the everyday humour and ridiculousness of life. And I was always very conscious of this as I was writing this novel. You want the beauty, but also—but nothing’s lost when that beauty is contrasted with the kind of fierceness and fury and hilarity of our living. I think it enhances the beauty. And so it’s not always an easy balance to strike, and I think maybe even sometimes I’m doing too much of one thing and not enough of another, but that’s okay because I think that’s also true to life.

Ellen Cregan: Absolutely. So Western Sydney is a really big part of this novel, and obviously a big part of your life, and it’s a place that’s produced just an incredible wealth of amazing writers, particularly in the past couple of decades. How has being a member of that writing community contributed to your work as a writer? Post publication, pre publication, just all of it?

Omar Sakr: I don’t think that the writing community is generating more writers from Western Sydney, if that makes sense. I think our communities are generating the writers that they need, and because—not just because there’s so many different groups in Western Sydney, but because everyone is a storyteller here, and everyone thinks that they are the funniest fucker to have ever lived, or the most important, or the smartest, or the whoever, you know, or the strongest. (Laughs). And I think that over the past couple of decades, there’s also been a shift in generations and in wealth and in access, just enough that you are starting to see writers from Western Sydney kind of reach the national stage. And yeah, there’s so many great writers. You know, we’re really blessed to have the leadership of Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example. We’re blessed to have had writings like Michael Mohammed Ahmed, like Sarah Ayoub, and more recently, Yumna Kassab and George Haddad, and so many others. And there’s going to be so many more to come. So it’s a really good time for us.

Ellen Cregan: Yeah, and as you say, it’s that access opening up just that little bit, and just enough that these words are being, you know, heard all through the country. It’s really exciting. So just on writing community as well, the book has had some incredible endorsements from authors like Christos Tsiolkas, Alexis Wright and Hannah Kent. How does it feel to receive this kind of praise on the cover of your book, which I think is pretty special?

Omar Sakr: Oh man, it means, it means so much to me. Yeah, Christos is a beautiful man with a great heart, and I was yeah, really, really lucky. That’s how I think of myself, anyway—really lucky to have these fabulous, fabulous writers. I’ve said before, I think Alexis Wright is the greatest writer on this continent and maybe one of even on the planet. She’s extraordinary. And yeah, just having the chat with her, you know, calling her on the phone and having a chat with her, having that access to these incredible writers, being in community with them is so vital. And I’m just so grateful.

Ellen Cregan: I have one more question for you before we wrap up. So for those who have read your book already and loved it, what would you recommend they read next? What authors would you recommend they sort of look into and start to discover?

Omar Sakr: Um… I think that presupposes a knowledge of what they’ve already read or not, it’s hard for me to answer, but I mentioned George Haddad, he has a novel coming out very soon, ⁠Losing Face, I really recommend people read that. Yumna Kassab has a new novel coming out, I really—called ⁠Australiana, I really recommend people read that. Sarah Ayoub has a new book called ⁠The Cult of Romance, that’s coming out this year as well. So there’s three Arab writers, three Arab Australian writers who have books that you can seek out and should. But yeah, I try not to be prescriptive in my reading, and I would always encourage people to read as widely as possible.

Ellen Cregan: It is so hard when a book comes out, all the recommendations that are like, if you like this thing, then you’ll like this thing. They always feel a bit hollow. But I personally found this book to be like a real—I want to use the word descendant, I don’t know if that’s the right word, of those early Christos Tsiolkas writings, like those short stories. And yeah, it also really did remind me of Yumna Kassab’s short stories, which, I haven’t read her new book yet, but her, I don’t know if her short stories or interconnect, or you’d more describe it as interconnected stories, but her first book, The House of Youssef, was, also kind of reminded me a bit of this.

Omar Sakr: I’m more than happy to be considered a descendant of Christos’ early writings. You know, that’s, yeah, that’s awesome. (Laughs)

Ellen Cregan: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to me today, Omar, it’s been so lovely to talk to you about your work.

Omar Sakr: Thank you so much for taking the time, I really, really appreciate it.

Ellen Cregan: That was the March First Book Club edition of the Kill Your Darlings podcast. Next month we’ll be featuring Hovering by Rhett Davis, winner of the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Thank you for joining us and see you next time.

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