The Spark: Michael Cope and Ken Barris’ Sunderland

The Spark is a weekly guest blog series by African writers talking about what inspired the big idea for their new novels.

Want to write one? I’m open to submissions for 2014. If you’re an African author or publisher with a new book out or coming up (or that came out in the last six months or so), please email me a query after you’ve read the guidelines here.

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The Spark for Sunderland by Ken Barris: 

Mike contacted me about an idea he had for a collaborative novel. We met over breakfast and discussed it. He presented his concept – a novel for two voices – which I liked  immediately, particularly the ending he had in mind.

One voice would belong to Charles de Villiers, a major South African novelist who had died of brain cancer, leaving behind the fragments of an unfinished novel. The other would belong to a young writer and academic, on the make but insecure, later named Art Berger. Mike proposed that I write the latter voice.

“It’s a great idea, Mike,” I said. “But why don’t you just write both voices?” To which he replied that he was only interested in writing the fragments – he didn’t have the concentration span to write a whole novel!

So a number of working breakfasts followed. We constructed potted biographies for both characters that would explain their flaws and tendencies to some extent, agreed on names and roles for the minor characters, and worked out a division of labour. Mike had provided the broad concept, including some of the key plot triggers and turning points. It became my task to plot the Berger narrative, and to incorporate and arrange the de Villiers fragments within it.

Mike wrote an obituary for Charles de Villiers under his own name, and I wrote up an interview between the not-yet-dead Charles de Villiers and Art Berger, most of which we didn’t use. We met reasonably often to monitor progress and to define whatever changes were necessary.

At one stage I got a bit irked with Mike for creating the same information chaos that Charles was meant to do, a case of performing Charles rather than just writing him. But there was method in this madness because it influenced the way I developed Art’s character and shaped his responses. Sunderland was a tremendously interesting and challenging project, and the fusion of creative energies was really rewarding. Not to mention great fun at a technical level.