Anna Smaill is a New Zealand poet, academic and now Man Booker longlisted novelist. ----more----Her striking debut The Chimes has something of all parts of her career so far. There is music (Smaill trained as a violinist), lyricism (in evoking a world in which words have been replaced by melody), intelligence (in exploring grand narratives about connection, language, fundamentalism, technology, religion) and narrative drive: The Chimes is a love story and a dystopian mystery.
We met just before publication at RIBA. After some chatter about jet lag, we moved on to:
I talk to Anna Smaill about her Man Booker longlist in The Independent: here.