RACHEL SEIFFERT
A snapshot of promise
‘Some writers take a few books to hit a stride with their style,‘ Rachel Seiffert reckons. ‘So I was lucky to find one that suited my subject.‘ Clinically cropped of adverbs and adjectives, The Dark Room, her Booker-nominated debut, was written while the former film editor attended Glasgow University‘s creative writing course, attracting much praise for its ‘snapshot‘ prose. Essentially three novellas, it linked different Holocaust experiences through photographic
form and theme.
Born in Oxford in 1971 to a German mother and Australian father, Seiffert was brought up bilingually. But it‘s the language of cinema that pervades both The Dark Room and Field Study, the short story collection from which she will read at the Festival. ‘Putting a book together is very close to film editing,‘ she reveals. ‘I produce a volume of work, pare it down and re-order it in the way things happen. Not just plot-wise, but in the way you receive information about a
character.‘
Her skill in this process has sparked interest in filming the story of Micha, the teacher unravelling his grandfather‘s SS past, and a green light for the adaptation of Lore, a young girl escorting her siblings through Germany after their Nazi parents are interred. ‘Obviously there‘s a long way to go, but I‘m tremendously excited
about it,‘ she admits.
After living in Berlin, motherhood prompted a return to London, and her next novel, about the fallout of Gulf War syndrome, takes place in contemporary Britain. Provisionally titled Afterwards, it‘s ‘much more about thought processes, what remained unarticulated in The
Dark Room‘. (Jay Richardson)
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NEXT ISSUE OUT
THURSDAY 26 AUGUST
ROGER MCGOUGH
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-1 TRE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 19