Tawseef Khan’s Shelf Life
Tawseef Khan is a qualified immigration solicitor and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Liverpool, where he examined the fairness of the British asylum system. He is also a graduate of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where he received the Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. His fiction has appeared in Lighthouse and Test Signal: a Northern anthology; his non-fiction in the New York Times, The Face and Hyphen. His debut non-fiction book Muslim, Actually was published by Atlantic in 2021. His debut novel, ‘Determination’ will be published on 13 June 2024.
How and where are you?
I’m sitting in a café in Chorlton. It’s Easter Monday, so there are lots of people brunching around me. It’s also Ramadan, so I should be fasting. I have been, but I’ve grown progressively more drained and sleep-deprived, so I took the day off to recover, then I slept badly anyway, and now I’m battling with the guilt of missing one for no good reason…
I enjoy writing in cafes, even though I have a perfectly good study at home. It’s the good coffee and hubbub of activity that I like. It’s that going out to a café makes it all feel a little less like work. I can usually write through the chatter and noise of the coffee machine. If I’m editing a draft of something, I’ll just stick on some headphones and work to some classical music.
But sometimes, too many people have come to the café with the same idea. Or the café has got the radio on too loud. Or two people have decided to sit right next to me and the sound of their laughter infiltrates my headphones. I become agitated and have to go home, where I sit in the sunlight in my living room, glossing over what I’ve written that morning. Or I go straight upstairs, clear away some of the books, post and old receipts on my desk and continue from where I left off, the house cold and blissfully quiet.
What are you reading right now?
At the moment, it’s My Three Dads: Patriarchy on the Great Plains by Jessa Crispin, a feminist writer whose book Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto I absolutely loved. On the surface My Three Dads explores the contradictions of growing up in rural Kansas, a place synonymous in the American imagination with wholesome, all-American living. But it continues her work of exploring the possibilities of a better world – how society should be organised so that we can all be happier – and it’s a richer, knottier book for it. There are no easy answers.
I’ve also started a project to read all of Jamaica Kincaid’s work. I’ve not been able to get her essay ‘In History’ out of my head since I first read it during my Creative Writing MA. It’s an essay in which she argues that the ability to name a people or place confers one with power over it, including the power to erase what came before. In novels like The Autobiography of My Mother as well as her non-fiction, what I love most is her completely singular perspective. Intense, impressionistic and never afraid to get ugly, nobody writes like Kincaid.
And since this is Lunate and we’re both based in Manchester, I must mention Oxblood, a piece of ‘northern noir’ that I recently read and utterly adored. Tom Benn is a genius.
And, of course, watching or listening to, or otherwise consuming?
The thing I regret most deeply about becoming a writer is its impact on my relationship to music. I can’t just have it on in the background anymore. Unless I’m on a plane or train or I’m driving, I don’t know when I can ‘break-in’ a new artist or album. But I’ve found myself returning to Anohni’s album Hopelessness. I hope this isn’t too cringey. But with the genocide currently being waged in Gaza, that album speaks to my anger and despondency, the feelings of betrayal I have towards those who can stop this and won’t. It speaks to my relative inaction and long-term complicity – all our inaction and complicity – in getting us to this point.
What did you read as a child?
A lot of Enid Blyton. It had something to do with my sheltered, inner-city upbringing, I’m sure. I was an only child and couldn’t play with the other kids on my estate. The friendships, freedom and adventures of ‘The Famous Five’ were an obvious appeal.
After that, teachers got me onto Robert Westall, Jacqueline Wilson, Melvyn Bragg. I read a lot of religious books about the Abrahamic prophets, whatever I could find in the school library. Then I discovered ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith. I was 15 at the time.
Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you, and what have you learnt from them?
A lot of novel writers who excel at short fiction: Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Alice Munro, Colm Toibin and Elizabeth Strout. I learned to write by reading them. Also, of course, reading Beloved by Toni Morrison for my A-Levels, profoundly altered me and what I understood fiction was capable of doing.
What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
Two weeks before my first book was published, it was the subject of a glorious takedown in The Times – you know, the kind of double-page spread they reserve for the books that undermine their agendas and completely destabilise their view of the world. It was my very first experience of being reviewed and I found it extremely tough to handle. But for my dad, being given that much space in a broadsheet, one of the country’s most respected newspapers at that, meant that I had made it.
Tell us a little about your creative process.
There isn’t one! What I mean to say is, I’m still figuring it out. My novel took a very long time to write, and I interrupted that process to write my non-fiction book Muslim, Actually, which was much easier. What I have gradually come to understand about myself is that I’m a slow writer and I write terrible first drafts. And that my process is much improved by doing a lot of reading, thinking and planning before I commit any words to the page.
How has your experience of the publishing industry been?
There is probably a disconnect between my experience in the publishing industry and my actual, personal experience of it. I’ve been incredibly fortunate: I have a brilliant agent, I’ve sold two books to great publishers and I’ve had two absolutely wonderful experiences of being edited. But this is a tough industry. It feels like there is a lot of precarity; whether that’s real or perceived, or the industry has just been structured that way, I don’t know. But I often ask myself if the effort of writing and publishing a book is financially worth it and if I will get the chance to be published again. So much is down to individual luck. It’s gruelling.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
‘Attend to your sentences,’ from the titan that is Leone Ross, whom I consider a lifelong mentor. Every time we speak, she signs off with that instruction, and I think to myself, yes, I can’t do very much about the business-side of writing. The only thing that I can control are my sentences.
What are you working on right now?
I try not to talk about a current project until I’m sure it will have a life beyond my laptop. That is unless you’re one of my closest writing buddies, when I have the habit of over-sharing every thought, every bad idea, every little breakthrough I think I’ve had. So much is written in dialogue with others and I love that.