Interesting interview by
Edward Eveld with novelist and screenwriter David Benioff at the website of the
Kansas City Star. Based on a high recommendation from a friend I bought his
“City of Thieves” but haven’t had time yet to read it. It’s about two children
on a quest in wartime Stalingrad. Here are a few things he said about how the
book came about:
“I always had that first
sentence in mind — “My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans
before he was eighteen” — so that became the framing device. I start in
contemporary United States with someone very much like me, explaining how he
got access to the story.” (This is an interesting counterpoint to novelist John
Irving, who always starts with his last sentence.)
“And this was partly inspired by European fairy tales, with
the classic story line in which a young boy or girl sets off on an impossible
mission, a quest, and encounter all sorts of obstacles, people or animals who
will be their allies or adversaries. That’s very much the structure here.
Because of that, it’s very appropriate to make this a straight-ahead story with
that narrative propulsion. It’s a very dark fairy tale, but European fairy
tales were like that.”
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