Literary festivals, stereotypes upended, travel: Simon Rowe
Simon Rowe is author of the cosy mystery Mami Suzuki: Private Eye (Penguin Random House, 2023), which was nominated for a Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel Award, and has been a bestseller on Amazon Japan and Singapore.
Born in Rotorua but raised in Waipawa, NZ, he has lived in Japan for more than twenty-seven years, winning numerous awards for his short fiction and screenplays. Check out what he had to say to Kete about his writing and publishing journey… Tell us about a stand-out moment writing or releasing Mami Suzuki. Was there something you hadn’t anticipated, or that pushed you out of your comfort zone, or that delighted you?
The India release of Mami Suzuki: Private Eye was a very surreal experience. When Penguin told me that I’d be speaking at the 2024 Jaipur Literary Festival, I nearly fell out of my chair. This is the largest literary festival in the world! Nobel, Booker, and Pulitzer prize-winners are thick on the ground, and you can hardly get through cocktail hour without bumping into a poet (the best drunks), publicist, or politician. I was lucky enough to join award-winning Indian author and crime journalist, Nilanjana Roy, for a panel discussion titled ‘The Perfect Crime’ which turned out to be loads of fun. Invitations to join panels at other literary festivals in Mumbai, Kolkata, Trivandrum (Kerala), and New Delhi, meant that the entire book tour lasted 28 days. It was exhausting. The predawn flights, midnight dahl, endless cross-town taxi rides, bookstore signings, with many a chai stop in between, were all death by stimulation — of which I loved and loathed every minute. Off the literary festival circuit, my most memorable experiences were visiting Rudyard Kipling’s childhood home in old Mumbai, riding the local train in Rajasthan with a girls’ high school yoga club, and swimming in the Arabian Sea in Kerala, southern India.
Who is your ideal reader? Who absolutely needs to read this book? If you’re a reader who likes a stereotype flipped on its head, then perhaps a story about a straight-talking, hard-drinking female private eye, with a loyal man friend waiting for her at the end of a smoky bar in a port city in Japan, is your kind of book? Mami Suzuki: Private Eye is also for armchair travellers; her cases take readers from Kobe port to the Japan Sea, then to Okinawa and the Seto Inland Sea islands, while sampling local cuisine and unique sights few foreign tourists ever see.
What inspires you? An author, a book, a place, or something we won’t have anticipated…
Living in Japan inspires my storytelling enormously. I’ve lived here for half my life, so what else am I going to write about? Ideas come from reading widely (currently Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), engaging with my students (I teach writing skills at university), as well as following the Japanese English-language media crime reports. Just the other day, I read about a zookeeper in Osaka who was busted for stealing food from chimpanzees. The article did not say why he was stealing. Definitely one for Mami Suzuki to solve! What Aotearoa New Zealand book do you wish you’d written?
Two, actually. I loved The Whale Rider (1987) by Witi Ihimaera and Gold and Greenstone (1996) by Barry Crump. Independence and a strong sense of adventure are both aspects which apply to Mami’s character. What’s been the stand-out book you’ve read this year? Lady Joker by Japanese author, Kaoru Takamura, is far and away the best mystery novel I’ve read in a decade. Many times, I almost missed my commuter train stop thanks to this riveting 1,200-page tome (in two volumes) about a group of marginalised men who get revenge on corporate Japan. It might not be everyone’s cup of cha, but the translation is fantastic, and if you’ve spent any amount in Japan, then you’ll certainly appreciate the detail.
And last, but definitely not least, what are you planning to write next?
Mami Suzuki book #2 is well underway and promises more intrigue with dialled-up suspense, jeopardy, and romance to boot. Stay tuned! Mami Suzuki: Private Eye (Penguin Random House, 2023, 9789815058895) is available in bookstores now.