The Booker-shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar (2019) returns with a hypnotic second novel rich with mythological goddesses, headless women and astrological motifs. In The First House (published by HarperCollins), Avni Doshi, who is based in Dubai, lays bare the anatomy of intimate relationships and the upheaval of self-transformation that looks to deities and nature for meaning. Edited excerpts from an interview:
How did the novel come about?
I had an idea about a family and a divorce, and there were various elements I had a sense of. I was living in this strange mid-life moment, seeing everyone around me in various forms of crisis, and what became apparent was that something shifts at mid-life. This one way in which we live, which is outwardly focused, ticking all the boxes, doing everything your parents wanted you to do or doing everything society wanted you to do, suddenly no longer has any meaning. I wanted to write about this in a more dramatic form, which included this divorce and this relationship with the family.
In the novel, there is this idea of the process of transformation being ugly, with cicadas as a reference over the typical butterfly from a cocoon. Can you elaborate on this?
