...and here's a wonderful connection between things I'm interested in: her son, Waris Hussein, was director for the first four episodes of
Doctor Who, as well as a later serial 'Marco Polo'. He seems to be an interesting person in his own
right, but of course, it's being the very first director of
Doctor Who for which he'll always be most remembered. I love his own memories of it:
"[I was] a graduate from Cambridge with honours, and you're directing this piece about cavemen in skins...I thought, 'Where have I landed up in my life?'"
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On the face of it, it seems such a delightfully odd juxtaposition. Stories of pre-partition feudal North India, and the first story of what now seems to be an almost quintessentially English science fiction show for the BBC. The Sceenonline profile argues for a consistent interest in 'female psychology' throughout Waris Hussain's work. Certainly what I've read of his mother's work suggests a concern with the roles available to women within a feudal patriarchal society.
In her introduction to my edition, Anita Desai tries to make a connection with the Mughal school of miniature painting and the influence of Urdu. This feels rather a stretch to me - a touch of exoticism for a Western audience that is being reintroduced to an Indian author - but even allowing for that, there's surely equally a modernist influence. A concern with the confrontation between an older feudal India and modernity. These are also works of memory, describing a world which by that point no longer existed - written after Attia Hosain decided to remain in England following Partition in 1947. So the bridge between tradition and modernity, which I'm rather artificially setting up here with my somewhat comical juxtaposition, was present in her life.
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Other family connections: her niece is the Pakistani author and journalist Muneeza Shamsie, and her great niece the novelist Kamila Shamsie. Quite a family!
I'm reminded of something I once read in an interview with Martin Amis, when he was promoting his autobiography. Part of the the inspiration for writing Experience was that he wanted to record his relationship with his father. This fact, two successful writers in the family, one the parent to the other, was a 'special case'. Even at the time, I thought this was off. Just of the top of my head I could think of Dumas pere et fils. Now I can see how his claim is part of the romanticising of the writing life. As though plenty of people don't follow their parents into similar or related careers.
And what about siblings? The Brontes? A.S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble? Vidia and Shiva Naipaul? Or is it only parents and children that count. The literal act of generation paralleling the metaphorical one of literary production.
It's also about opportunity. How many writers had parents who nursed ambitions, but never made it into print? Or who might have done once or twice? Or worked in journalism? How many mothers or grandmothers had gifts for storytelling, but never even dreamed of making it into print? So yes, I think it's a rather gendered claim which sees only certain kinds of writing, of literary art, as worthy of importance.
As so often with Amis, it's hard to escape the conclusion that if he'd been a bit less impressed with himself, he'd have been a better writer.
