Episode 115: The Great Game by Arvind Ethan David

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Arvind Ethan David

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters 00:57

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Sarah Harrison  01:23

Carolyn, we get to welcome one of our guests back again today. A friend.

Carolyn Daughters  01:29

A friend of the show.

Sarah Harrison  01:30

Yes, a title we recently made up. We will bestow it on you. Welcome back, Arvind.

Arvind Ethan David  01:38

Thank you. It’s nice to be back. I like being a friend of the show.

Sarah Harrison  01:43

Arvind Ethan David is returning to Tea Tonic and Toxin to discuss The Great Game, his debut prose novel, a historical mystery and conspiracy thriller that brings an Indian military veteran and a law student into the worlds of A. J. Raffles, Sherlock Holmes, and a young Winston Churchill, London, 1905. Balvinder dev Singh is an Indian military veteran, law student, and accomplice to the gentleman thief A. J. Raffles. When an imperialist general is brutally murdered in his Mayfair library, Bal and Raffles find themselves implicated in a series of killings that draws the attention of Scotland Yard and Sherlock Holmes.

Carolyn Daughters  02:28

As Bal attempts to clear his name, his friendship with the Irish violinist Maud Adler forces him to reconsider his relationship with Britain and its empire. What begins as a historical murder mystery expands into a conspiracy thriller and a provocative examination of loyalty, belonging, and colonial power. Arvind Ethan David is a writer and producer whose work spans novels, graphic fiction, audio, television, film, and theater. Woo, that’s a lot. Arvind previously joined us to discuss his graphic adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business. Welcome back, Arvind!

Arvind Ethan David  03:06

Thank you, and I like the handoff you guys there. I like the seamless throwing of the baton, the throwing of the microphone one to the other.

Carolyn Daughters  03:16

We’re very smooth, very smooth.

Sarah Harrison  03:18

I was just going to say very smooth.

Carolyn Daughters  03:20

And we also say the same words.

Sarah Harrison  03:25

Well, it’s great to have you back.

Carolyn Daughters  03:30

And Arvind, will you read for us just your passage of choice today, just to give us a feel for The Great Game?

Arvind Ethan David  03:41

Oh, we’re getting straight into it, are we? Oh, we commit ourselves. I’m ready.

Sarah Harrison  03:47

Yes, we do.

Carolyn Daughters  03:48

Yes, we give ourselves a pat on the back and then we ask for a reading.

Arvind Ethan David  03:52

I see. I got it. Well, I thought, ladies, if you’ll allow me, and if your listeners indulge, I’m going to try and read a bit I have not read before, because I also am selfish and don’t want to bore myself, and so I’m going to choose something new. Because in your lovely introduction, you mentioned that The Great Game is set in the London of 1905, and our hero, unusually for a book set in that period, is an immigrant, is an Indian man who finds himself in London, having fought in a British war, and he’s just making his way. But then he meets someone. He meets a woman, and when he meets this woman, she does come force him to confront some of the easy assumptions that maybe he’s made. And so the bit I want to read you is their third meeting, possibly their second date. Although I don’t think that language would have been used in 1905, but they have had a picnic, and she has slapped him in the face once. So that’s where we are when this section. Opens up, and it’s in the first person I will be playing the role of Balvinder, as well, I suppose, as every other role. All this confusion of identity and loyalty had been swirling in me, but was suddenly wiped clean from my mind, when Maud appeared at my door, and was replaced with a far more bowel-clenching, blood rising, immediate, pressing, impersonal flavor of confusion. What was Maud Adler doing at my home? I turned to ask her this question, but she was already half way up the flight of stairs, heading towards my study, and I was reminded of Raffles’ casual assumption of rights over my house. I looked out into the street to establish if the neighbors had taken note of my visitor, and seeing only a smug pigeon, shut the door and followed her up the staircase. Maud, I must apologize. She held up her hand to my face, her palm flat towards me, like a schoolteacher silencing a rambunctious pupil.

Arvind Ethan David  06:13

[Continuing to read from The Great Game] I have a question for you, Balvinder dev Singh. Ask it anything. What is the status of women in the Punjab? I sensed that she was testing me, and to buy time, I passed out her question in my in my mind. Status, most would consider the word derived from the Latin, but the root sha is in fact also found in Sanskrit, to stand. to stay, to be situated. Where are women situated in the Punjab? Where would Maud Adler be situated? Where come to that? Was I situated in England? Oh, what was served by this relentless questioning of things, could we not leave the matter alone, unexamined, just for a moment? Even as my brain whirled around the nested questions, I found myself speaking, giving a surface answer to a deep question. In my culture, women are venerated as mothers, sisters, wives, women are treated well, enjoy privileges and freedoms. Freedoms certainly are women free to be, say, musicians. I felt a more comfortable ground here. Of course, my own grandmother was most accomplished at the sitar. Did she play for her private pleasure, or for paying audiences, for her own pleasure, of course, and that of her family. Why, of course, I stuttered a bit. The answer was so obvious I struggled to articulate it. It would not be proper. She was a woman of high caste from a good family. She was my grandmother, and then I realized the trap Maud had laid for me, but she did not attack-not yet. She was content to play with her prey a little longer, an artful tiger, enjoying the terror of the deer. Are there no Indian women who perform music publicly then? No, they are, but they are women of the court. What does that mean? I felt danger all around me. There were teeth lurking in her every word, yet I could not stop myself from responding. Courtesans. She smiled sweetly, as if all she wished were clarity, and what does that mean? Whores? I was angry now, and I spat the word out. She did not seem to notice as she smiled still, but her smile was sharp. Actual whores, or just treated as whores because they dare to perform music in public, I don’t know. I was only ever at court briefly when my father had business.

Arvind Ethan David  09:07

[Continuing to read from The Great Game] Does it make a difference? I felt very afraid. I imagine it would. Yes, for them. I mean, strange is it not? How men need to categorize women so? If you are afraid of us, we become witches to be burned. If you desire us, then we are whores to be bought. I would never call you by either of those names, because you don’t fear me, or because you don’t desire me. I don’t remember crossing the room. It was only three or four paces between us, and suddenly I was no longer by the door, but by her side. I grasped her by the waist and picked her clean off the ground, holding her aloft, so we looked at each other eye to eye. I don’t know why I did such a thing, save that I felt a powerful knee. To take control of the situation, Maud exhaled sharply as my grip squeezed her, but otherwise made no sound and instead met my eyes with her own fiery stare, and reaching out, gripped my shoulders in her hands, so we were locked like two wrestlers about to commence battle. I wish to apologize for not appreciating your true Irish nature and for my ignorance of the history of your people. I said with a formality that sat strangely with our current state of physical intimacy. Damn right, she responded, speaking low, her jaw set. Having spent much of Sunday at the library engaged in research on the Irish question, I see now that I was a fool and disrespectful and patronizing. I seemed to be trapped in the mode of a letter writer to the Times. She was in my arms still and cocked her head to one side. You spent the day doing research. The British Museum library is not open on Sundays. I nodded in agreement. Not usually, no. I can, however, be quite persuasive when necessary. Oh, can you now? Something in her softened, and her grip on me shifted slightly, transitioning from battle stance to embrace.

Arvind Ethan David  11:20

[Continuing to read from The Great Game] Until this moment, the only time our skin had touched was when she had put her hand on my face, the first time in tenderness and the second in anger. Both times she had initiated the contact, and I had been the recipient. This time I was the instigator. I had seized her, seeking to reverse the positions, I would not be prey any longer, but predator. This was wishful thinking, because holding her tight, I found I did not know what to do next. I was no tiger, but a house cat, having lost the instinct of its ancestors, did not know what to do with its captured prey. That was my first mistake, for Maud Adler was no mouse but an apex predator, and leaning into my face in what I mistook as a tender gesture, she suddenly bit down hard on my lip, drawing blood. The shock made me release her, but she did not fall, tightening her own grip, wrapping her legs around my waist for purchase. For a moment, I was acutely conscious of the strength in her, her arms and legs tightly muscled from hours of standing practice at her instrument, the delicate lines of the tendons in her neck bisecting her prominent clavicle, and of her softness also, as her chest pressed against mine. Then she bit me again. This time with full ferocity on my neck, and I screamed like a child in pain. We fell forward onto my desk, shoving aside the output of my morning work. And now, in a frenzy such as I had never before experienced, I reached for the neckline of her dress. No. I have said this would not be a personal memoir, not a recounting of the most private moments of private lives, and I stand by my word. I shall not waste your time or despoil her dignity by recounting our first moments here, enough for you to know that on that afternoon, Maud Adler and I, an Irish woman and an Indian man, decided that we were no longer content to live as passive subjects of an empire that had occupied and despoiled our homelands. We would no longer be the colonized, no longer victims, no longer would we live as chattel or vassals of the crown.

Arvind Ethan David  13:49

[Continuing to read from The Great Game] We would cease to play the part of exotic curios existing only for the amusement of the English, conforming to their norms and constrained by their customs. No, we would stage our own small defiance against centuries of subjugation. If we were to stand here in London, if we chose to be situated here at the heart of the empire, then we would choose to stand together. We would live life as our full selves. We would live as man and wife, and not give two ripened figs what the idiot English and their fucking society might make of it.

Carolyn Daughters  14:31

I love that you chose that passage from The Great Game. I love the character of Maud Adler, just as I love the character of Bal. So Maud Adler is an Irish violinist. She’s maybe a proto-feminist. She has very strong political and intellectual ideas, and she challenges Bal in in some ways, as we just saw in that scene. Can you talk a little bit about the complicated relationship they both have with the? The British rule, and also the differences between their relationship, Irish and Indian, with British rule.

Arvind Ethan David  15:10

So, historically, and this isn’t talked about enough today, but the Irish were almost the first example of British imperial rule, the British colonized Ireland and subjugated Ireland before they got to the rest of us, and so and it’s an interesting place because it’s to Bal’s eyes to Bal as an Indian immigrant, Maud appeared to be one of the oppressor, she was high status. She was white. She is a prominent, famous musician. He assumed that she was not only unattainable but also cut from the same cloth as his fancy English friends like A. J. Raffles, but of course she calls him on his Edwardian bullshit and points out to him that she is Irish and Irish is different, and that they have more in common than he had realized. And this is the moment where obviously their relationship is consummated, and where she continues to force him to confront the hard questions. Because until meeting her, until the events of The Great Game, Bal, like so many immigrants, is just content to get by. He’s not questioning deep questions of Loyalty and geopolitics and justice. He’s just trying to get a job and get a degree, and also in his case, he’s trying to steal enough swag to fund his lifestyle. So he’s just trying to get by in his own way.

Sarah Harrison  16:59

I’m going to step back a little bit to Bal, or also known as Bunny. So I hadn’t realized, and I hope we touch on a multiple of these characters. I hadn’t realized that Raffles and Bunny were themselves a dynamic duo from the past, relay. I think written by the brother-in-law to Sherlock Holmes. Do I have that right? I had to do a lot of googling, and didn’t get it all done. But there was a lot to look up.

Arvind Ethan David  17:35

I’m playing a game. So, the original Raffles and Bunny were the original gentleman thief and accomplice created by E. W. Hornung, as you have discovered, brother-in-law to Arthur Conan Doyle. He basically stole his more famous brother-in-law’s inventions and made them crooks instead of Holmes and Watson solving crimes. You have Raffles and Bunny causing crimes, and they were incredibly famous for the 50 years after their creation. There were multiple short stories and collections, and novel, and plays, and radio dramas, and eventually movies. David Niven was probably the last person to play Raffles on the big screen in a wonderful movie from I think 1937 or 1939, and so, and I’ve always loved them because I know you guys think a lot about the start of mystery fiction and the start of detective fiction, and obviously Holmes is pretty near the start of detective fiction, really preceded by Edgar Allan Poe’s creations, but right at the start of the gentleman thief is Raffles. There’s Raffles, and then there’s Dupin. That’s where that tradition begins, and then of course, it’s become a very established tradition of the. I mean, we have the new Michael B. Jordan take on the … what is the name of the movie he has just remade? The last version was Pierce Brosnan. Well, now, now we’re going to have an embarrassing 10 seconds of air as we figure this out. Hang on, hang on. Art thief. Pierce Brosnan played him in the last version. Steve McQueen played him in the original.

Carolyn Daughters  19:32

Oh, I do know, I do know which film you’re talking about, but I can’t remember the name of the character. It’s a great movie.

Arvind Ethan David  19:41

Yes, and anyway, it’s a tradition that goes back, and it started here. It started with Raffles, so I wanted to bring them back into the world which has lost them, and but I needed to give them my own spin. In my version in The Great Game, we have a new Bunny. Our Bunny is Balvinder, and he’s not as you might expect him.

Carolyn Daughters  20:08

Bal is a military veteran. He’s an immigrant. He’s a thief. He’s a law student. He’s got all these different elements of his personality or identity. How did you choose These elements.

Arvind Ethan David  20:23

First, we have to take a moment and say it’s The Thomas Crown Affair.

Carolyn Daughters  20:27

The Thomas Crown Affair. Yes, very good movie. Very Thomas Crown.

Arvind Ethan David  20:31

The Thomas Crown Affair is the tradition that started with Raffles. That’s the thing, and so really the starting idea, the inciting incident, both in The Great Game and in my writing of the book, was this idea of what would happen if a cat burglar was interrupted by a murder. I just thought that was an interesting premise, and that’s how the book opens. Raffles is on one of his jobs after a diamond from a particular general, and in the middle of what otherwise would have been a flawlessly executed bit of light larceny, he hears screaming, and being a brave chap, he runs towards the screaming, and he witnesses the general being brutally murdered by a mysterious, shadowy individual, and that just seemed to me a cool way to start, and then the question became: All right, who is that thief? And then the thief. I was like, well, let’s use the original gentleman thief. Let’s use Raffles, and we went from there. But Balvinder dev Singh, as doesn’t happen every day, announced himself to me. I was writing the book in the first person. I knew my narrator would be Raffles’ accomplice because that’s the literary tradition of Holmes and Watson and Raffles and Bunny. And then I found the moment that is in the book, where he turns to the reader and goes, “Dear reader, I should confess, my name is not Bunny. Let me tell you who I really am. And honestly, I didn’t know until I knew that’s who he really was, and he marched in fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. And once he was announced, a classical reference that I like to think I would have used before Christopher Nolan’s movie, which I haven’t yet seen, but nevertheless topical, topical at this time, and there he was, and that suddenly made it a very different book, because that let me do two things: The Great Game is still a murder mystery, a spy thriller, an adventure yarn. It still plays in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells and all these writers I love and have always loved. But then it let me ask some questions of them. It asked me to interrogate this canon of imperial literature from my perspective, from the perspective of a colonial, from the perspective of someone who was a subject of the crown, not a who was an object as much as a subject of the crown, and that seemed to me something I hadn’t seen before, and something that I was just interested in as someone who loves these books but has been historically left out of them.

Sarah Harrison  23:24

It reminded me a lot to throw back to our episode we did with you previously, and trouble is my business, where you took the driver and you retooled him a bit for The Great Game, and I thought, okay, okay, here we go again. We got Bunny. We’re retooling him. Can you talk to me a little bit about? And this is partly a question I would say from my own ignorance. But the changes you made from the original Bunny to your Bunny. Obviously, he’s Indian. The original Bunny was not. What other changes in terms of personality, relationship, and then we’ll probably need to expand to several of the other characters because you really had some interesting treatments of these classical characters that I’m really interested in.

Arvind Ethan David  24:14

So first to say that you have found me out. I only have one trick, and I will do it over and over again. No, I like no, I like to think that’s not true. I played a slightly different game here in the Raymond Chandler. The character of the chauffeur, George, exists. He is there, and all I’m really doing is fleshing out detail that Chandler left out. Everything about him is sketched in the original, but not maybe focused on. And so, I’m not creating a new character in The Great Game; more, I’m embroidering and detailing an existing one. And of course, trouble is my business is an adaptation, so that is right and appropriate. Here I’m writing an original book. This is its own. This is a story of my own creation. This is an adventure of my own devising. But I am resurrecting and interrogating a handful of literary heroes of mine and historical heroes for mine. Winston Churchill is a figure, but heroes who are complicated, because you can be a hero without being a simple man. Most heroes, I would argue, are not to be.

Sarah Harrison  25:26

Probably.

Arvind Ethan David  25:28

It takes it takes some compromises to achieve greatness. Very few great men are good men, and that was something I’m interested in. And so with Balvinder, he is entirely my own creation. He has no precedent in Raffles or Sherlock canon. The old Bunny is dead. I’ve killed him.

Sarah Harrison  25:52

That was a funny bit where you’re like, “Oh, what happened to the old Bunny? Well, he just calls me Bunny still.

Arvind Ethan David  26:00

Yes, and so the old Bunny is dead. He dies in the Boer War, and Raffles meets Balvinder, and they become friends. But perhaps not unusually for an aristocratic Englishman of a certain era, Raffles isn’t entirely sure how to pronoun how to pronounce Balvinder, and he really can’t be bothered to learn, and so Bunny it is, and this is a common thing where even to this day I have plenty of ethnically Indian friends or ethnically Arab friends or ethnically African friends who will have an anglicized or Americanized version of their first name, something simple that white folks don’t have a difficulty with. Their tongues don’t trip, and so I just thought, let’s do that. Let’s do that. We see it all the time, but over the course of The Great Game, I guess he becomes less and less Bunny and more and more Balvinder.

Carolyn Daughters  27:01

It’s interesting because there’s a lot I like about A.J. Raffles in The Great Game, and then there are several things that bothered me about A.J. Raffles in this book. One of them was his calling his friend Bunny. The transference there, basically in my mind, almost stripped Bal of identity, and then Al reassumes his identity by basically saying, “This is who I am, and so I really liked that. And then I was curious. As an extension of that, started thinking, “Okay, there’s all these characters that we’re familiar with: J.M. Barry’s in here, Sherlock Holmes, Watson, and outside of characters, real people. There’s a young Winston Churchill. What consciously or unconsciously did you do to make sure that these famous faces didn’t take over The Great Game, but that Bal didn’t become Bunny or this backseat character, but instead took the wheel of control of his story.

Arvind Ethan David  28:06

That’s the whole project, really, in a way, and also it’s the whole arc of his character. When we open The Great Game, Bal is content to be a sidekick. He is almost proud of it, he thinks this is pretty fancy. Look at me, I am A. J. Raffles’ sidekick. I get to go to these fancy garden parties in grand country houses, and I get and I get the odd diamond and the odd pearl that pays for. Look at me in my Saville Row suits, and I get to have breakfast and drinks at the Garrick Club, he’s pretty pleased with himself. He’s come far from his village in the Punjab. He’s come far from being an enlisted man in the military. He’s a society figure now, and of course, that’s the insidious thing about colonization. That’s the insidious thing about institutional racism is that the colored person, the minority, not only accepts but finds themselves grateful for the strictures of the society they find themselves operating within.

Carolyn Daughters  29:15

Grateful for a seat at the table, like he’s at these dinner parties. He has a seat at the table, but when he goes to the club, people walk by him. People he knows, who’s had deep conversations with. But there’s at the beginning that sense of gratefulness that he has had this experience and opportunity, and yet you sense the beginning of a frustration in him.

Arvind Ethan David  29:38

You do, you do, and that awakening was something I wanted to write about. That’s something that is, I think, a very modern and recognizable character experience. Certainly in immigrants and folks of color, but not exclusively. It is just a feeling of anybody who goes. Oh, is the society being fair to me? Do I have access to equal justice and equal opportunity? Am I given my due, whether it’s as a woman or a person of color or a person of a different orientation or gender presentation, or just as a person in a game that seems too often stacked against us, and the thing that’s interesting about the London of 1905 is it’s a high point of imperial power and wealth for the United Kingdom, and that’s the UK now is a very different and fractured and fragile place, but the UK then was at the height of its arrogance and its power, and I’m not suggesting that there are any parallels to any contemporary societies that we might think of, but if readers want to take them, that is for them.

Sarah Harrison  31:01

You mentioned, and we’ve read a few, so listeners feel free to go back to our Holmes episodes if you’re interested. But we’ve read a few Sherlock Holmes, and I believe you referred to him as one of your literary heroes. In The Great Game, he didn’t seem that heroic. The relationship between Sherlock and Watson-it was brief, but it left me feeling sad. Can you talk a little bit about how you interpreted these characters?

Arvind Ethan David  31:36

Well, it’s one of the great abusive relationships of literature. It always has been from the beginning. Sherlock is the alpha, is the boss, and Watson is the sidekick, and that is never. I am not distorting the canon at all in that. That is how it presents from the start. Watson is, on paper an accomplished man. He’s a medical doctor. He’s a war veteran. In an early adventure, he meets and woos a considerable woman, and becomes what one imagines, although it’s never shown a father and the head of his own household and runs his own business. But when Sherlock clicks his tongue. Watson runs, and whatever it costs him, whatever it costs his family, and he comes back for more. And he is always kept in the dark, always treated as the fool, always used as the bait or the prey or the or the distraction or the mark, and at the end of it, he is grateful for whatever scraps of acknowledgment Sherlock Holmes will throw him whilst lighting. In the books, it’s never a pipe. In the books, it’s a cigarette, and they share a smoke together. And so that, and again, I think that is not an unknown dynamic. We see that in plenty of great men and their number twos, either in the business or in the house. We see that scenario all the time. We see it in our corporate titans, our technology billionaires, we see it in our heads of state. We understand this dynamic, and we forgive it more than forgive it. We celebrate it in a culture that rewards the great, the great man or the great woman of the moment, and Holmes is a prototype of that, and so I found that interesting to just explore the psychology. I don’t I don’t think exaggerate it or caricature it. I think he is he does have love and affection for Watson, but it’s the affection of a benevolent master to his dog, and Watson also, and there’s I hope a moving if sad bit in The Great Game, where Watson understands that and he accepts his role, and he is content in it because he gets to be part of greatness, and that is not something anybody can say. But Bal begins to think that maybe he wants more from life than that.

Carolyn Daughters  34:27

He maybe sees himself a little bit in Watson and in that inferior, superior roles assumed by Holmes and Watson.

Arvind Ethan David  34:36

Yeah, no, Watson warns him. Watson takes him aside and warns him.

Carolyn Daughters  34:40

Be careful.

Arvind Ethan David  34:41

Be careful, my boy.

Carolyn Daughters  34:42

I thought that was that was one of the more interesting ends of a chapter. I thought, oh my goodness, this is really good and unexpected. One thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is the Great Game, the name of this book. I believe. Initially, you had other titles for the book, so I’d love for you to share what those titles were and how you ended up with The Great Game, and any relation between what the Great Game was in the 19th century. Maybe educate us a little bit and also talk a little bit about Rudyard Kipling.

Arvind Ethan David  35:19

For sure. So yes, it was not the first title, but I’m delighted it is the last. And as so often with these things, once you get there, you wonder how you ever thought you were going anywhere else. But yeah, we had lots of other variations. Some were more poetic and literary. Some were more thrillery and airport covery, but I think this one accurately represents The Great Game, which is a bit of both of those things. It has, I hope, both its both its thriller, page turning airport quality, and occasionally it takes its time a little more to think about some of these big questions, and so I think the Great Game fits and where it comes from. Yes, so the Great Game is a phrase that surfaces in the 19th century, late 19th century, and it’s really about the great geopolitical battle between the British Empire, the Russian Empire, in Afghanistan, but really globally, and the French Empire, and it first comes, I think, in a letter between a British spy and a young recruit, and he welcomes him to the game. He says, “Welcome to the great game. Now, the tragic story is the young man who’s being welcomed. Shortly later, was to find himself dead in a horrible massacre in in Afghanistan. So it’s already a bloody game from the start, and the person who makes the phrase famous is Rudyard Kipling, he of The Jungle Book, but for these purposes he of Kim, and in Kim, which is of course another spy thriller of this period, which features in Kim maybe the first conflicted between two cultures, spy someone half of England and half of India. He is welcome to the great game, and I didn’t realize when I had written The Great Game because the title came last. I didn’t realize because I’m an idiot that I was writing a spiritual sequel to Kim, but it’s a book that I read as a young man. That is a very young man, as a teenager, that hit me and clearly has stayed with me. And this is a little throwback to it.

Carolyn Daughters  37:55

Because in Kim, Kim assimilates into Indian culture to some degree as a younger, as a child, as a younger man, but then emerges as the white son of a military man, an Irishman, for example. So he’s able to play both sides or periodically fit into both worlds.

Arvind Ethan David  38:21

Kim, I suppose, could be Balvinder and Maud’s future child.

Sarah Harrison  38:29

There you go.

Arvind Ethan David  38:31

I mean the timeline doesn’t quite work, but conceptually, that’s who he is.

Sarah Harrison  38:35

No, that’s really interesting. I want to actually step back and even another step back. I was surprised. Watch out! Watch out! There’s a cliff.

Sarah Harrison  38:49

I may have not been reading very closely, but since you were a guest before, and as you mentioned, Trouble Is My Business was an adaptation and a graphic novel. I hadn’t realized until I read it on the jacket of The Great Game that this was your debut novel. As you’ve done so much work that we’re always referring to, can you talk a little bit about veering into this? How did you get here?

Arvind Ethan David  39:20

This is my first one. Well, I say it’s my first one. Like everybody, I have that roman clef written in my 20s of my tortured love affair, with the one who got away. But that, thankfully, is and will remain forever more in a draw. This is this is my first book to see my first prose novel to see Light of Day, and after a career as a graphic novelist, playwright, television writer, and it wasn’t planned. Honestly, it was that thing that doesn’t happen very often. But was lovely when it happens, is that I got an incoming phone call from a publisher saying, “Would you think of writing a novel? And they had read, they had read a two pager of an idea, which I thought might make a nice short story. I was thinking of writing a collection of short stories, and they said, “No, we think this one wants to be a novel. To which the only possible answer is yes, absolutely. And then you go away, and then you go away and figure out if it can be done. And it turned out it could be.

Carolyn Daughters  40:39

So, couple things. I loved The Great Game. First of all, I enjoyed it and read it in two sittings, not one, but not 10. Like in two sittings.

Sarah Harrison  40:49

You’re so fast, Carolyn.

Carolyn Daughters  40:53

I was sick all weekend long, and so I used sometimes if I’m not feeling well, I use it as an excuse to lap up the books that I love, and so, in two sittings, I finished The Great Game. And in graduate school, I studied literature of empire, so I have a dangerous level of knowledge of the literature of that period. And so this was really fun for me to read, and felt a little bit like a hearkening back for me, but another quirky thing. So I was looking on Amazon and saw that Sanjeev Bhaskar does the audio book for this book, and I love him. Okay, he is in this British crime drama series called Unforgotten with Nicola Walker. It’s amazing. Everybody should go find this show and watch it. And I’ve not listened to the audio book, but can you talk a little bit about like what? I know you’re very attuned not just to the written word, though very much so, but to the audio, to the presentation, to how to the drama of a thing like what does he bring to the reading of this audio book and how was he chosen?

Arvind Ethan David  42:12

He brings everything he brings everything and I really recommend I mean get sick again as soon as possible so that you can just start listening to the audio book. It’s eight hours of joy. I will say, Sanj took my writing and it now exists about 12 inches above the page. He is phenomenal. He was my only choice. We’ve we’re old friends. We are all collaborators. This is, I think, the third or fourth thing we’ve done together. But he doesn’t do a lot of audio books. The last two he did were Salman Rushdie’s last book and the Life of Pi, and so I was very flattered when he agreed to do it, and it was a glorious four days. I mean, he brings, he gives every single character a different voice, their own accent, their own personality, and there are about 25 speaking characters in The Great Game. And it’s never caricature; it’s always fully realized. And it’s like you walk into a movie when he starts talking. It’s extraordinary, and I knew it had to be. I was going to say someone like him, but there isn’t anyone like him because the other thing about Sanjeev Bhaskar is yes, nowadays he’s famous here because of his wonderful television crime drama. Which, by the way, quick aside, it’s a story he tells, so I feel okay telling it. The name dropping, the name dropping is his, not mine. But Sanj was recently walking around Central Park with a friend, and now Sanj in Britain, Sanjeev in Britain is a national treasure. He is so famous nobody doesn’t know who he is. So walking around with him is quite exhausting, frankly. But in in America, less so, but un unforgotten, so unforgettable is changing that. And so he was walking around Central Park with a friend, and three times they were stopped, and people asked for photograph with Sanj, and asked for his friend to take the photograph. Well, two times they asked his friend to take the photograph. The third time they noticed his friend was Hugh Jackman, and asked for the photograph with you.

Carolyn Daughters  44:44

Oh, but they asked for Sanj first and then Hugh. Is that the order? They asked two out of three.

Arvind Ethan David  45:01

That’s well. As Sanjeev tells it, he was weeping inside, obviously, but like a little girl. No, it was so. So it was an extraordinary experience, and I really, obviously, I want people to read The Great Game, but I’d be okay if everybody just read the audio book because he’s extraordinary.

Sarah Harrison  45:17

picture. Good. Oh, they asked you to take the picture.

Carolyn Daughters  45:21

That’s amazing.

Sarah Harrison  45:22

refreshing for him.

Carolyn Daughters  45:23

Sure, I mean, and they’re getting the story through the written word or through the audio. So, I mean, that’s the important thing.

Arvind Ethan David  45:32

There are actually brain studies now that show that it’s exactly the same centers of the brain that are activated. So, it’s not the idea that the audio book is the easy way is just factually incorrect. It is a perfectly good way to read.

Sarah Harrison  45:49

That’s awesome. I want to actually go back into the book for a second and some of these classic characters you’ve resurrected. It’s it was interesting for me as we’re reading things chronologically, and this is fitting in a lot of the timelines that we’ve been looking at. We recently read this year “Green for Danger, and what I remember, the nurse characters in “Green for Danger” were talking about Winston Churchill and how everyone had a crush on him during World War II, and they thought he was so handsome. And then I’m reading your framing of a young Churchill is very, very different from that. So two different book perspectives, just a peep into Churchill from both of them. But talk a little bit about your Winston Churchill.

Arvind Ethan David  46:43

Well, Churchill, by the time we all think of him today, the image of the great British bulldog who won the Second World War and persuaded America to join it and save civilization whilst chomping a cigar. It’s not that that’s not true, but that’s all we remember now for the most part, and that’s Churchill. Near the end of his life, that’s Churchill in the in his in his 60s, and the interesting thing about Churchill is he? He almost was never prime minister. If not for the war, Churchill would not have been prime minister. Churchill had been around chasing the top job for 30 years at that point, as his father had before him. Now, Churchill, as in his 20s, and we meet him in The Great Game, having just turned 30, was a very different figure. Still, dashing in his way, but dashing and  in spite himself. Churchill is a very small man. He’s five foot two or three. He’s a slight man. He has no chin, he has a receding hairline, he has a speech impediment. The great Churchillian rhetoric comes gradually and comes in a way to compensate from the fact that he had a lisp. He trained himself to be a great orator because he didn’t have the instrument naturally, and he was also someone with an incredible sense of his own entitlement and his own capability and his own destiny. He famously wrote an essay at school, at high school, saying that one day he would lead Great Britain and the Empire and save civilization, very specifically, not just be prime minister, but save civilization. That was the mission he gave himself, and it sounds hubristic and insane, and of course it is, except it came, except it came true, but it also is hubristic and insane, but yet understandable because of who he was. He was the son of a lord. He was from a long line of military and political leaders and heroes. He was born in a literal castle in a little palace, Blanding’s palace, and he is a member, high-born member of the of the aristocracy of the most powerful country in the world in in the in history. So of course he thinks he’s going to save the world, and when we meet him, he’s on the first steps of that mission. He’s just got his first big job in cabinet. He is Under Secretary of Colonial Affairs, which means he’s in charge of the British colonies, which at this stage are two thirds of the planet. And he’s 30 years old and has never done anything other than be a journalist and been. Prisoner in his one war, so it’s a fantastic place to meet him, and he’s and I bow to no one in my admiration for Churchill’s abilities, but I like to see him as a whole man, and amongst other things, he was a racist, and again, it’s not inconsistent to be great and terrible at the same time.

Carolyn Daughters  50:25

Sure. I know we’re getting really close on time, so very quickly in 10 words or less. I’m just kidding. In when you were researching, because surely you came to this writing process for The Great Game with some strong basis of knowledge of empire and the literature of empire, but you probably, I’m imagining, did quite a bit of research as well. Did anything surprise or shock you in this process where you learned something about the history or about one of these characters or one of these real life people, and you thought, “Wow, I had no idea.”

Arvind Ethan David  51:04

Here’s some random stuff that came out of the detail. The first Indian member of the British Parliament, so the first, the equivalent of the first congressman, I guess, the first Indian and the first non-white is a guy called Danja Brand Nerodi, who turns up in 1897. There isn’t another one till the 1980s for 100 years.

Carolyn Daughters  51:38

Wow!

Arvind Ethan David  51:40

That’s Diane Abbott, who is still around, and then we have our first Indian Prime Minister a couple of years ago.

Carolyn Daughters  51:47

Sure.

Arvind Ethan David  51:48

So that was interesting. It’s interesting because it shows you that history is in a straight line, right? It’s not that things are always getting better. The London of 1905 was already a diverse place, where there was interracial marriage, where there were prominent figures of color in positions of power. It was already a diverse and interesting place, and it got worse, not better. It got worse over the next 60 years, and then it started getting better again. And it’s worth remembering that history moves in cyclical arcs, in spirals that go down as well as up when we stand possibly at the edge of a spiral right now. It’s not forever. The pendulum will turn. The corkscrew will spin the other way. So I think there were lots of moments like that, of going, oh, the texture is not what I thought it would be. The facts maybe I knew, but the texture of what empire felt like, of what London felt like, was different.

Sarah Harrison  53:11

All right, and I’m gonna go a little bit sideways with one of my last questions here, if that’s all right. In The Great Game, there was a cute thing as Bal was walking one night and he heard familiar music, and so there’s this interlude where he meets Maud, but he’s also listening to different Indian music, Indian instruments, and one of the characters playing the instrument was named Arvind. Oh, that’s nice. Do you play that instrument? And tell me a little bit about the musical education we get from the book.

Arvind Ethan David  53:59

So I do not play that or any instrument to any level worth talking about. It’s funny. You’re the somebody else texted me a couple of days ago saying, “Did your grandmother really play the sitar? And I was like, “Come on, it’s a novel. It’s not true. But here’s what I’m allowed a little cameo. Here’s what is true, though. Maud Adler is based on a real person. Maud Adler is based on a woman called Maud McCarthy, who was a virtuosic violin prodigy, who was Irish, who was feminist and brave and fearless, and who made it her mission to bring Indian classical music to the West. So all that is true. The idea that they would have been Indians playing the sitar in the Royal College of Music in. 1905 is absolutely true because Maud McCarthy brought them there, and I didn’t know that. I made up this character, and then I thought I better check that I’m not being ridiculous because I make her quite forward and quite feminist and quite sure of herself, and I didn’t want to be accused of importing modernist tendencies or putting a character who couldn’t have existed. And I looked up and I went, “Oh, look at the rail mode. She did all of that and then some. She lived in a threesome with her husband and her lover for a long time in nine in the early 1900 s, and publicly. And so it turns out that Maud’s been doing it.

Carolyn Daughters  55:58

Will we see more of Bal. Will we have more adventures after this novel?

Arvind Ethan David  56:06

It wasn’t planned. I saw this very much. Well, nothing about this was planned. I wasn’t planning to write even the one novel, but once I did, I must admit I have fallen in love with them a little bit, And so, if your listeners turn into my readers in sufficient numbers, then we’ll see if we can’t continue the adventures.

Carolyn Daughters  56:28

They should. They very much should. Oh, and I should mention. Okay, we whenever this episode goes live, we will also have a giveaway of The Great Game. We love a giveaway.

Sarah Harrison  56:43

Who doesn’t love a giveaway?

Carolyn Daughters  56:45

For real.

Sarah Harrison  56:47

Arvind, it’s been delightful having you back on the show. The time has flown by, but I do want to give you just a moment to say, well, first of all, where should people look for you and your work, and also, is there anything else you want to say about the novel that we haven’t discussed?

Arvind Ethan David  57:07

No, you have been comprehensive and fantastic as ever, and I feel we didn’t get deep enough into the imperial literature of it all. But we can maybe do a follow up offline. I will say, I’ll say, Carolyn, you are the second interviewer with a postgraduate degree in Victorian and Edwardian literature.

Sarah Harrison  57:31

They should be pin pals.

Arvind Ethan David  57:34

I will introduce you to the wonderful Quincy Tam of the Edge, Malaysia, who was a very fun interview as well. Anyway, no, I think we’ve covered the ground. Find me on Instagram, Arvind David on Instagram. Find me on Substack, the dread and the envy.substack.com. The dread and the envy was in fact the original working title for this book, and so it seemed a shame to waste. I don’t think of things. I’m not good with ideas. So when I have them, I keep them. And The Great Game can be found on Amazon, on bookshop.org, wherever you get your books. If your local bookstore doesn’t have it, ask them to order it. And thank you. It’s been a joy.

Carolyn Daughters  58:22

We have a page on our website for Arvind, and you can buy the book from a link right on that page. And also your website is arvindethandavid.co.

Arvind Ethan David  58:35

Thank you. I forgot I had a website, but it’s excellent.

Sarah Harrison  58:39

We have it on Amazon. We have it linked from bookshop.org, and we even have a local bookstore we’ve been partnering with who can order it in if you want to come here to Roanoke and order it. Perfect. Thank you so much, Arvind. It’s been delightful seeing you again.

Carolyn Daughters  58:55

We love having you on every year as a friend of the show. So I can’t wait to see what we’re going to talk about next year.

Arvind Ethan David  59:02

I better get rising. See you in a year, ladies. Thank you. Take care.

Carolyn Daughters

Thanks so much for listening to this episode on The Great Game by Arvind Ethan David. Please help other mystery lovers find our show by subscribing or with a like, a share, or a rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

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Carolyn Daughters

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.