‘Writing is a journey inside your head and sometimes the outside world is an obstacle’: Defne Suman

Thanks to her translator, Defne Suman is now almost a Malayali writer. At least, that’s what one might assume, given the number of times she was stopped by a reader when she and I walked across the grounds at the Kerala Literature Festival in Calicut. The fact that she’s good-looking helps, of course, but that’s not why Suman has been regularly translated into fourteen languages, including Malayalam and English. Her storytelling, perpetually universal, touches on the themes Malayali readers are accustomed to encountering in the translations they read: magical realism and multi-generational family sagas, both with a touch of social and political commentary.

Suman, who exclaimed, “I feel like a celebrity here!”, launched her latest Malayalam translation of The Last Apartment in Istanbul at this year’s festival. Written from four unmistakably dissimilar perspectives, her novel At The Breakfast Table is a disorientating read, but the premise demands it. On artist Sirin Saka’s 100th birthday, her family gathers to celebrate her long career, and it’s a protracted supper because family histories never seem to run out of secrets (or people who want to probe into them).

Suman spoke to Scroll about her email-only relationship with her translator, Betsy Göksel, her approach to historical research, and why one should write from memory rather...

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