I was actively running around Vietnam looking for novel inspiration and amassing misadventures and following weird ideas about snakes and spirits, and honestly just talking to a lot of people about ghosts. After that was over I thought, “I guess I’ll stick around and write a novel,” and since I was 23 I went into it without a plan and just waited for the novel to bite me. After I graduated from college, I moved to southern Vietnam and I spent a year teaching English. I think that the roots coming out of the kernel started before I even thought I was writing a novel. I like that you used the seed metaphor because I do think this is kind of a tree novel. What was the first seed of the idea for this book? What couldn’t you stop thinking about that led to creating this story? Each new character and timeline brings the reader from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts as they come one step closer to understanding what binds them all. Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, Build Your House Around My Body spins half a century of Vietnamese history and folklore into the story of two young women who go missing decades apart, linked together by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Scott Williamson, Café and Bar Manager, interviewed Violet Kupersmith, author of Build Your House Around My Body, in celebration of being shortlisted for the 2021 First Novel Prize.
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