LG017
You Should Have Come Here When You Were Not Here
Brannavan Gnanalingam
During WWII German soldiers stationed in Paris complained that it did not live up to their expectations. Parisians made a simple reply: ‘you should have come here when you were not here’.
You
Should Have Come Here When You Were Not Here is furnished with rich historical anecdotes
and offers a fresh take on Paris through the subtlety of Gnanalingam’s compelling
second-person narrative.
“Paris has
been written and filmed and depicted so lovingly that it is almost
trapped in amber. What I found was very different: a segregated, austere, and
above all, disorientating place,” said Gnanalingam. “Perhaps its bloody history and the darkness
of French literature at its best wasn't just coincidence.”
The book is centred on Veronica,
a New Zealander in her mid-30s and a journalist going nowhere. She decides to move
to Paris, believing the city will change her life. She is surprised, but not in
the way she expected: Paris is indifferent to her.
“I wanted to subvert the romantic notion that you can travel
somewhere and expect the city to bend over backwards to accommodate you.
Indifference and impotence are almost built into the grand boulevards and
cobbled medieval streets.”
Gnanalingam’s
first book Getting Under Sail
was released by Lawrence & Gibson
in 2011.
The NZ Listener offered the following
praise for it: “The narrator’s wry honesty, miles away from
the usual Africa travelogue clichés, and the inherent humour of the events are
both lifted by Gnanalingam’s knack for the striking
image. Some thought-provoking unsentimental
reflections on travel and belonging round out this unique, beguiling effort.”
