Anita Mason 2008 on 'The Right Hand of the Sun'

Julia very much enjoyed reading 'The Right Hand of the Sun ' and did the interview with Anita Mason for us.

J: In your Acknowledgements, you mention ‘intractable difficulties' associated with the writing of this novel. Could you say what these were, and how you managed to surmount them?

AM: The main one was the character of my first-person narrator, Gerónimo, who I thought would solve a problem for me but in fact created a problem on almost every page. He is a complex personality, part Spaniard part Maya, whose sympathies and perceptions are constantly shifting, and it was very difficult to write a coherent narrative from such a viewpoint. Another problem was to do with the native religion, cosmic beliefs and time structure: these are obscure and alien to western ways of thought, and I needed not only to understand them but to work out what they meant in terms of the story I was telling (I did not, for instance, want simply to peddle the old story that the Meshica believed that Cortés was the returning god Quetzalcoatl, although I did have to deal with it). It took a long time to sort out all this. I don't know any way to get over difficulties like these except hammering away at them until one day they loosen up.

J: What drew you to the subject of the Conquistadors and their victims?

AM: I became interested in the empires of the Aztecs and Incas as a child: it was the exoticism, the mystery and the magnificence which attracted me. The subject came back to me many years later when I'd just finished writing a novel which focused on a woman aviator in Nazi Germany. After this, the Conquest of Mexico, I thought, would be just the change I needed. So I began reading about it, and it wouldn't let me go. I was tremendously moved by the fate of the native peoples after the conquest. And however much I read, I always felt that there was something mysterious in what happened, something I couldn't quite grasp, and that, for me, is a powerful spur to writing.

J: Your characters are a mixed crew of ‘real' historical and imaginary people. Was it difficult to combine the two types of character?

AM: No, because you have to recreate a historical character in your mind in order to use them in fiction; in other words, you have to turn historical characters into fictional characters. So they mingle with the other fictional characters quite easily.

J: In telling the story of Cortes' journeys and battles, did you stick rigidly to the facts, as far as they are known, or did you take some artistic liberties?

AM: Well, for one thing there are various first-hand accounts of those journeys and battles and on occasion they contradict each other completely, which makes a novelist's job easier because you can pick the one that suits your purposes. However, I did take some liberties. For instance, it would have been very tedious to describe the painstaking process by which Cortés isolated the Meshica militarily and diplomatically, fighting battles and making alliances all around the valley, before he began the siege of Tenochtitlan. He spent almost as long on the careful preparations for the siege, which take up less than 50 pages in the book, as on the first journey to the city, the retreat and the siege itself, to which I have devoted 210 pages. So in a sense I have distorted the campaign; but this is a novel, not a history, and it has to have a novel's shape. I also nudged, just a little, the date of Francisco de Montejo's return in the last section, because I wanted to refer to the conquest of the Yucatan. 

J: Did you spend time in South America while researching this book? If so how did this experience affect you?

AM: I went to Mexico twice to look at the important sites of the Conquest and visit the museums. It was extremely valuable, and I fell in love with the country. I've since been back there several times. My first visit had an unexpected result, in that the Zapatista revolt broke out when I was there and I ended up writing a short novel about that and putting the Conquest novel aside for a time.

J: While researching and writing the novel, were you tempted to ‘take sides'?

AM: From the start, it was going to be a book in which I wanted to tell both sides of the story from the inside. My sympathies as an individual are completely with the people who were conquered, not the conquerors, and I think that sympathy does come through in the writing. I think the conquest was an appalling crime. But as a writer I find the Spanish side of the story very interesting, with all its manoeuvring and politics, the lust for gold, and the danger; while the character of Cortés is fascinatingly complex. In any case, when you're writing out of someone's point of view, you have to enter into that point of view, you have to feel it. 

J: This was the first of your novels which I have read although I am now eager to read the others! Would you say that there are common themes linking this book to your other work, or is it a new departure?

AM: There are common themes in my work, although the subjects are very different. There's a break between my first two novels and the later ones: in the first two, I was very interested in religion and the trouble it causes, and after that I became very interested in politics and the trouble it causes. Even so, I took a look - an unkind look - at the politics of early Christianity in my second novel, "The Illusionist," and there is an important spiritual element in "The Right Hand of the Sun." You could also say that I go on being interested in how power corrupts (but the person being corrupted never notices it), and in alternatives to orthodoxies - religious, moral, social, sexual, etc. I like outsiders and have a taste for revolutions. I'm drawn to historical subjects because you can see these processes working themselves out, or trying to, through the centuries.

J: Noting that this is a 500 page book, how long did the actual process of writing take?

AM: I spent about two years researching it, planning (and re-planning) it and staring into museum display cases and out of windows. I think I spent about two and half years on the actual writing, and most of that was devoted to Parts 1 and 5, Gerónimo's story, which was the most difficult and was rewritten many times. It's hard to be precise, however, because I started writing it before I'd finished researching it (since the research could clearly take up the rest of my life if I didn't make a start!). From the time I started reading about the subject to the time I gave the draft to my agent, more than ten years went by - but I did write other things in the meantime.  

J: Have you thought that this would make a wonderful movie: any chances of this happening?

AM: I do think it would make a good film, indeed a spectacular film, although I doubt if a film could capture the ambiguity that is so much a part of it and that a novel accommodates quite easily. If anyone is thinking of making a film of it, I haven't been told! 

J: Are you now working on your next novel, and could you tell us something about it, please?

AM: Yes, I am working on the next novel, and it is set in Haiti. That's all I want to say at the moment.

J: How do you get through a writing block?

AM: The wonderful thing about a historical subject is that if you feel you really can't write you can always do some more research. 

J: What do you do to relax when you're in the process of writing?

AM: Going for a walk is very good. It at the same time clears your head and lets you go on thinking if you want to. I have also been known to paddle my kayak on the river, similarly good for the mind. And I live in a major city where there are all sorts of less virtuous diversions.