An Interview with Koushik Banerjea

Koushik Banerjea is the author of two novels, both written while still the sole carer for his late mother: Another Kind of Concrete (Jacaranda 2020) and Category Unknown (London Books 2022). His short stories have appeared in Feign Lit, Jerry Jazz Musician, Salvation in Stereo, Minor Literatures, Verbal, Writers Resist, and in the crime fiction anthologies Shots in the Dark and Shots in the Dark II. He has had poems published in Third Space, Building Bridges (forthcoming Renard Press November 2024), Mogadored (Tangerine Press), Razur Cuts Magazine, and online in House of Poetry magazine. Sick Carnival, a personal response to the racist riots that flared up across the UK in August 2024, was published in September as a single poem micro-chapbook by Scumbag Press. A former youth worker and DJ, he has also previously been a journalist, but try not to hold that against him! He lives in south London.

Learn more at koushikbanerjea.co / instagram.com/hark.athim.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I’ve always had a head full of stories. I suppose it was inevitable that some of them would eventually spill over onto the page. To begin with it was just boredom that was the driver. My early schooling was an odd mixture of dull and dangerous – dull because the teachers were hopeless, and dangerous because of where the school was (on a notorious housing estate) and who most of the pupils were (semi-feral racists from largely dysfunctional families). So you can see why the school library, an oasis of relative calm, was so appealing to a little kid who preferred books to brawling but, to riff on the Beasties, would happily fight for his right to be bookish. As much as any of the actual books in there, it was the peace and quiet I craved, though I did love it when I found an illustrated book of Indian tales and legends in there, and its African counterpart. The stories felt so far removed from the south London I knew in the 1970s, and that was a thrilling feeling.

In the first place though it was actually my ma, rather than any of my teachers, who taught me to read and write, and to love books. Like a lot of immigrant mothers, she was the glue that held everything together, and I think it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t be a writer now were it not for her. And of course that desire to write isn’t just down to boredom. I loved the limitless possibilities of fiction, of conjuring up worlds where maybe, just maybe, the same rules didn’t always apply. Whereas with Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a nerd could certainly be king for a day…or more. Growing up at the same time as Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi’s earliest books were starting to hit the shelves was particularly thrilling. What they described in both their fiction and essays was a world I already felt I knew a little, but which rarely, if ever, saw the light of day within the publishing mainstream. It was sharp, coded, and an explosion of colour against the standard monochrome palette. And it was unapologetic in the tilt of its jaw. I loved that!

It was some time after that when I discovered the picaresque, modernist joys of Sam Selvon’s novels, The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending in particular. But the writing bug was already in place by then. I’m always drawn to writers who are doing something interesting with the form itself, say Lucia Berlin in A Manual for Cleaning Ladies, or Eimear McBride in A girl is a half-formed thing, or even someone working in a different discipline (academia) like Saidiya Hartman, or a film like Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer), which takes a story you think you know – the classic ‘one last job’ heist movie – and does something very different with it. After all, why would you want to tell the same story that’s already been told a thousand times before?

What inspired you to start writing this book?

Even a quick glance at the news should be enough to confirm that the world is falling apart. Raging ethnonationalism, ongoing genocide, ecocide, and wholesale denialism about all of it. And I’m not just talking about the standard alt-Right rogues’ gallery. The book charts some of this unravelling via the interwoven stories of a group of friends who fight fiercely for love in a time utterly scarred by hate. I was interested to see where that would lead me.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Animal Nightlife felt perfect to me for a story in which the key protagonists sometimes appear in a hybrid human/animal form, and at other moments are indistinguishable from the rest of their peers. And as much as anything else, it’s also a book about shapeshifting and the decidedly non-linear properties of time. Night and day and all that. Nightlife after all is where many people have traditionally taken on a very different persona from their workaday selves. But it’s also a time of mischief, of shadow, of a heightened sense of play, and danger. And the human animal is but one species of many.

Anyway, that’s the cerebral explanation. In truth something else was also in play. A very stylish 1980s pop/soul band from London called Animal Nightlife. I loved their music back in the day, and, seriously, how can you argue with that name? So I contacted the former lead singer and he was generous enough to allow me to use the band name as the title for the book. He has also written a foreword for the book, which is quite an endorsement, and something I’m not complaining about at all.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Great question! Luckily, there’s no ‘if’ about it. There is a soundtrack. Here’s a taster, though there’s plenty more where these came from:

D’Angelo: ‘Spanish Joint,’ ‘Brown Sugar’

Kate Bush: ‘Feel It’

Curtis Mayfield: ‘Sweet Exorcist,’ ‘Underground’

Deep Blue: ‘The Helicopter Tune’

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: ‘Mustt Mustt’

David Bowie: ‘Fascination,’ ‘Young Americans’

Janet Kay: ‘Silly Games’

Minnie Ripperton: ‘Reasons’

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

For the best part of a decade, while I was writing my first two novels, I was the sole carer for my elderly mother. She passed away in 2023, but not before being able to hold those books in her hands. But before that, and in a very different life, I have done other jobs. I worked in academia (as a lecturer in postcolonial theory). I was a youth worker in south London for nearly twenty years. Prior to that I also trained and worked as a journalist, and have kept up with that to the present day. The more random element over the years has been DJ-ing, and working on market stalls for a year or so before finally acknowledging that I was just too coddled for those 5 a.m. starts.

As for that quirky detail that readers wouldn’t otherwise know, here’s one. Many years back I’d just popped out to pick up a pint of milk when I bumped into legendary musician Roy Ayers at the top of my road. It transpired he was doing a soundcheck for his gig later that evening at a local music venue. This being south London, we started gabbing about music, and I did my best not to dissolve into wide-eyed fanboy mode. I must have done ok as he then asked if there was anywhere good to eat around there, before inviting me along with him to the Indian restaurant just across the road. He treated me to a three-course meal, asked me if there was a particular tune of his that I liked, and put me on the guest list! Then later, he opened the gig with ‘Mystic Voyage’ (my answer to his earlier question.) In the end, and after all that excitement, I forgot the milk…

What books did you read (for research or comfort) throughout your writing process?

Good question, but honestly I can’t remember! Vaguely recall a Collins guide to birds of the Indian subcontinent, some Clarice Lispector, and a whole slew of short stories (Edwidge Danticat, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Rabindranath Tagore.) There must have been other things, but in truth I couldn’t say what they were. This was also just after an intense period of bereavement for me personally, so whatever else should be on that list has evidently been swallowed up by the grief.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

Be kind to one another, and to other species.

My perfect reader of course is the one who reads without generic expectation, and just for the pleasure of the journey. Oh yeah, and seeing as though we’re in full fantasy territory now, they’re also the one who buys the book, sings its praises, and embraces a plant-based diet!

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.