'Jack Straw was a radical!'

Q&A: Hari Kunzru

You've captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s with such intensity, it's easy to forget that you didn't experience the period firsthand. What kind of research was required for this book?

My Revolutions is a strange mixture of personal experience and library research. I've been on many demonstrations, including some which have turned violent. I've participated in political meetings and the culture of British dissent, which stretches back to the sixties and beyond.

But most of my research consisted of an attempt to familiarise myself with the various political currents around at that time. I read widely "" Herbert Marcuse, biographies of activists, leaflets put out by groups and sects at the time. I also went to Thailand, to write the scenes set there.

Have you personally been interested in 1960s radicalism for a long time?

I have always been interested in that period "" probably since I first heard the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper LP as a child! For some years I've been more interested in the currents of political thought than the music and fashion.

I think we're living in a very conservative time, where alternatives to the current world order aren't being seriously explored. So it's instructive to look back at a time when many people were convinced the world was on the cusp of radical change.

Did you speak to people who were part of the counterculture? Have many lives seen the kind of trajectory that Pat Ellis's does in your book ""from being a revolutionary to becoming a cog in the state machinery?

I've met many people who played their part. They range from those whose lives have been entirely defined by actions they took in their 20s "" people who have served prison sentences, or have "enjoyed the attentions of the security services""" to those for whom their 1960s activities had few consequences.

In the UK, several government ministers were once young radicals. An amusing moment came when I found a yellowing Leftist newspaper with an article by a young writer "In Praise of Mao". That writer, Jack Straw, became foreign secretary under Tony Blair!

There are hints of a connection between the activities of Chris's group and the fundamentalist terrorism facing the world today. Do you believe there is a natural progression from idealism to terrorism?

I deliberately set the "present day" of the novel before 9/11, because I preferred to allow readers to make their own connections with the current situation. I do think that idealism is dangerous, whether it's political or religious.

Trying to make the world fit the shape of an idea is always a mistake. I think good politics always arises out of an appreciation of the real material conditions, the actual problems and possibilities.

Does the word "revolutions" imply moving in circles? Is a revolution doomed to disappointment?

The book is full of thoughts about circularity, you're right. I don't think history is doomed to repeat itself exactly, but then neither is it a linear, progressive thing. One of the undercurrents in the novel is the contrast between a Buddhist perspective and a political revolutionary one. Renunciation versus engagement, repetition vs progression.

When your first book came out, there was a rush in the Indian media to categorise you as an NRI writer. Was My Revolutions a deliberate decision to write a novel with no Indian connection?

I probably would have done it anyway, but it is also a way of stating my intention to write about whatever I feel like. I think the publishing industry in the UK is beginning to accept that Asian writers are exploring territory that has nothing to do with race, culture or tradition "" but I think we could go further with that.

Similarly, I think it's too simple to categorise writers from the Indian diaspora as NRI or proper desi or whatever. India is resonating throughout the world, in different ways for each person.

The Booker longlist this year is a giant-killer. Does this suggest a changing literary scene in Britain?

There are some good new names on the list, and I just read two surveys "" one in the Guardian saying that being a novelist is the favourite dream career of British people, the other saying that most novelists earn much less than the average wage! I think there's a great future for fiction in both Britain and India.

What are you working on next?

I'm writing short stories and cooking up a couple of novel ideas, one of which is a large historical novel set in India, the other which is perhaps a piece of science fiction.