Dear Reader
Last month in this letter, I highlighted how following her heart, not the sales targets, had paid off for Paula Hawkins. This month we’re pleased to feature another author whose fiction is driven by personal tastes and beliefs more than the market. Inspired by his beloved Bradford hometown, crime novelist AA Dhand doesn’t use our modern social tensions and conflicts as mere dramatic backdrop so much as drag them out into the light with the heartfelt belief that they can be discussed and, hopefully, addressed for our collective benefit. Whichever side you stand of our various political divides, there’s no denying that we live in troubled times, and only by finding common ground between our various communities can we hope to move on. And one of the best ways to do that is by writing about our experiences, and reading about other people’s. The foundation is, like writers from Dickens to Dhand, unblinkingly portraying social iniquities and failings, but as writers, we mustn’t forget our second, no less important role, as seers and dreamers. To misquote Gandhi, we must ‘write the change we want to see in the world’.