MY PATH TO PUBLICATION
NICOLAS PADAMSEE
The author describes the extreme reading experience that set him on the path to writing a debut novel about radicalisation
It was reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as a teenager that made me fall in love with literature and want to become a writer. This dark 19th-century Russian novel forced me to spend several days in the company of a narcissistic yet also sensitive, intelligent and idealistic antihero, Raskolnikov, inviting me to sympathise with him on one page, recoil from him on the next, sympathise, recoil, sympathise, recoil and on and on in this vein. It was a sweaty, frantic and thrilling experience unlike any I’d had with a book before. For weeks after finishing it, I turned over the reasons for his actions – so many were plausible and simultaneously none.
I soon moved on to authors such as Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Nabokov, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis and Monica Ali and started keeping notebooks and writing short stories. Having built up a portfolio, I applied for a Creative Writing masters at UEA, aware of its leading reputation and star-studded alumni. The acceptance letter gave me a huge confidence boost. I swapped London for Norwich and a deadening job for a year of intense workshopping. On the course, I made several close friends, with the same passion for stories and words, and found trusted readers.