KRISTIN HARMEL interview with Ioulis Tsakalou
-Through your descriptions in your book, I discern a nostalgia for the old days. Does memory leave behind indelible traces?
Yes, I guess I have a nostalgia for the old days, but I also think I look “backwards” to see “forwards”. I have great respect for the past and love to write regarding it, but I am most intrigued by how the past has shaped the present, how it has affected our lives, and how it can continue to teach us to coexist peacefully. So maybe when you detect in my books a nostalgia for the old days, you’re actually seeing me falling in love with my characters and their era. I really enjoy doing research and putting myself in the shoes of my heroes.
-Why specifically for this time period?
I’ve been writing regarding the WWII period since my novel The Sweetness of Oblivion in 2012, so I’ve been writing regarding that period for over a decade. My first World War II novel was inspired by my time in Paris, and once I wrote it, I was fascinated by the research and mightn’t resist the urge to return to that period once more and once more. Additionally, the fact that in World War II there were so many civilians who rose to the occasion by doing incredibly brave things continues to inspire us to this day to have strength and courage in our own lives.
-Which shadows inspired you and were the trigger for writing “The Daughter of Paris”?
Part of my original inspiration for the novel was the thought that the citizens of Paris were living under the threat of Allied bombing. Often the bombings missed and killed many innocent people. One such case was the suburbs of Paris, where hundreds of people lost their lives. So that gave me the impetus to write this book, but as I started to create the characters and get to know them, it became a book regarding motherhood and friendship and the difficult choices we face to protect the ones we love. In The Daughter of Paris, Elise, Juliet, and Ruth all make different choices in trying to protect their children, and it would be impossible for them to know which decisions are the right ones.
-The characters seem to have longings in common that remain unfulfilled. How did you come up with this turmoil in their lives, what are you interested in exploring from them and what do you wish to convey to the reader?
I think this is something many readers will be able to relate to. We all have paths we didn’t take, and we all have things in our past where we wonder, “If I had made a different decision, might my life have turned out differently?” All we can do is make the best decisions we can at the moment but it’s impossible not to wonder how things would have turned out if we had made different choices.
-Elise and Ruth Levy (a Jewish widowed mother of two) were forced to hand their children over to others to protect them. The hardest decision for a mother. How does life really go on following this upheaval?
This is a very good question. And it’s also a question that millions of mothers faced during World War II. I think it’s very difficult, even now 80 years later, to put ourselves in the shoes of these women. To send their child away to the care of strangers in the hope that it will be safe, or to keep it with them, knowing that this carries the risk that they will die together? As a mother myself, my heart aches when I think of the women who have faced this dilemma.
-Do you ever meet people who remind you of the protagonists of your stories?
Oh yes. I do my best to talk to people who lived through the events I write regarding. I think these “first hand” interviews really bring the research to life.
-How did you handle your research to get the result you wanted?
I always start by reading as much as I can regarding the period and locations I plan to write regarding. Then I try to spend some time in the place I’m writing regarding, as I think it’s very important to set foot on its soil and really experience it: its smells, its food, its atmosphere, its culture. Finally, I try to talk to people—both historians and survivors—who can tell me more than just the facts. Often this is the biggest part of understanding the emotion associated with these traumatic situations. Research plays a very important role in shaping the characters and plot of the book.
-Do you think people in modern times have been exemplified by the mistakes of the past? recognizing how easily love turns to hate?
I think we’ve definitely made a lot of progress, but I think we still have a long way to go.
-What does the success of your books and their translation into 30 languages mean to you?
I am still amazed by the fact that my books are translated into so many languages and read in so many parts of the world. I am extremely grateful to my foreign rights agent, Heather Baror Shapiro, for getting this book into the hands of so many foreign publishers. It’s a huge honor and every time I get an email from a reader from another country, it reminds me of the fact that books have the power to bring us together. The thought of “Daughter of Paris” reaching the world makes me think that, at the core of our being as human beings, we all have much more in common that unites us than things that divide us, no matter where we live, what we believe in, how old we are, what our political beliefs are or what we look like. Books allow us to step into someone else’s shoes for a little while, and I believe that the more we have access to books that lie outside of our own experiences and backgrounds, the better off the world will be.
-What is the purpose of Friends & Fiction, the online community you founded and run with fellow New York Times bestselling authors Patti Callahan Henry, Kristy Woodson Harvey, and Mary Kay Andrews?
The four of us—along with a fifth writer, Mary Alice Monroe, who left the group in 2021 to focus on her own writing—originally started Friends & Fiction four years ago, in April 2020, to reach readers and to support booksellers during the first days of the pandemic. None of us had any idea how much it would resonate with readers, and now, four years later, we’ve conducted well over 200 interviews with other authors, done numerous live events with bookstores, and host a Facebook group with around 250,000 members. We have a new show every Wednesday at 19:00 Greek time. These shows are available on both YouTube and our podcast. You can learn more at: www.friendsandfiction.com.
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