Jennifer Steil, EXILE MUSIC
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[1:03]Summer Bundle, by it is a gift, a housewarming. If you actually go somewhere or just give it to
[1:08]yourself, everybody needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. This is Day Five,
[1:14]the last day of this week for my July book blast. And today is Fiction Friday. I'll be releasing
[1:20]a few episodes of novels that I think are pretty awesome and can't wait to introduce you to these
[1:25]authors. I'm doing the July book blast because I interviewed a lot of people during quarantine
[1:30]and the books came out during quarantine and I would love them to get the airtime they need now
[1:35]to get the word out. Also, a lot of these books are great beach reads. And if you have any time this
[1:40]summer, I would love for you to hear more from these authors directly. So please enjoy Fiction Friday
[1:46]and stay tuned. This whole week was memoir Monday, debut Tuesday, beach reads Wednesday,
[1:51]thrilling Thursday and now today, Fiction Friday. I hope you've had a chance to listen to
[1:55]a few this week and enjoy this one by Jennifer Style is the author of two previous books,
[2:01]the woman who fell from the sky and memoir of her experience as a journalist and Yemen,
[2:07]and the ambassador's wife, a novel about a hostage crisis that was also inspired by her own
[2:11]experience. Her latest book is called Exile Music. She currently lives in London with her husband and
[2:17]daughter. Hi there. Wow, I was too big for a minute. No, no, no, you're great. How are you?
[2:23]I'm good. Thank you. Are you okay? I'm okay. I'm sorry. I'm usually very together. It's just
[2:29]been one of those days. No, I got it. Your book is so good. I'm so glad. I can't believe you've
[2:35]reached out to me directly and I hadn't read it. And it's, you know what? It's written in such a
[2:41]like a vibrant, refreshing, new way. I feel like I've read a zillion books about this period of time
[2:45]and the Holocaust and everything else. And this is like a whole different thing. So anyway,
[2:49]I just, I'm loving it. Just say it out. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. I'm really
[2:54]pretty. And I'm sorry you've had such a short time to read it. No, it's okay. I did what I could,
[2:59]but I will come back to it because the characters are like embedded in my brain now and I'm
[3:03]really excited. So why don't you tell people watching and listening? Because this will eventually
[3:09]be a podcast as well. What Exile Music is about and what inspired you to write it? Sure.
[3:14]So Exile Music is based on an under-explored slice of World War II history. During World War II,
[3:22]there were between 10 and 20,000 Jewish refugees in Bolivia. And a lot of these were artists and
[3:29]musicians. And I lived in Bolivia for four years and met some of these refugees and their descendants.
[3:37]So I got the idea for the book when my husband came dashing home from work one night full of
[3:43]energy and said, you know, I just had the most interesting conversation with the Austrian
[3:47]console. And he's, you know, did you know that during the war there were, you know, more than 10,000
[3:53]Jewish refugees here? And I hadn't known that. We'd only just moved to La Paz when I found this out.
[3:59]So soon after that, I met the son of one of these refugees who was born in La Paz the year that
[4:09]his parents arrived from Poland. His mother is from a small town in Poland that I'm not going to
[4:15]try to pronounce. But this town was pretty much wiped out by the Nazis and almost no one survived.
[4:21]And his mother suffered horrific things while she was there. She was, she was hidden below a pharmacy.
[4:28]Her two-year-old went blind in captivity and then was murdered by the Nazis along with her parents.
[4:37]And her husband had been conscripted by the Russian army and he was away with the Russian army
[4:45]for all of the war. And after the war, someone miraculously, they were reunited in Poland.
[4:52]And she gave testimony to someone who has archived it in Holocaust Museum in Israel.
[4:58]So John, my friend from Bolivia, gave me his mother's testimony, which, you know, I read and
[5:05]full. And he has not read it himself. Unsurprisingly, it's too traumatic for him to read.
[5:12]So that was where the story started. I began wondering what it must have been like for these very
[5:19]urban professional musicians and actors and artists and others coming from Vienna to suddenly
[5:27]find themselves in the middle of the Andes living at 12,000 feet. I just thought, you know,
[5:32]not only is there a difference in culture and language, but a completely different,
[5:39]sorry, doorbell suddenly. I'm hoping that my 10-year-old will get it, but sorry about that.
[5:46]So it began with me imagining what it must have been like for these refugees to arrive in
[5:50]La Paz at this time. And I also, at the time, my daughter was around three or four. And she was
[5:59]very busy creating this imaginary world. That was quite complex. It had not only a queen,
[6:07]but it had a president who was a her maphrodite so that this person could equally represent men and
[6:12]women. That was her solution to that problem. So she was creating such a complicated world. And
[6:18]she had maps of it and drawings. And I thought if I were a little girl growing up in Vienna,
[6:24]while the Nazis were closing in on me and my family, and I wasn't able to understand or
[6:32]cope emotionally with what was going on, I might be tempted to retreat into an imaginary world.
[6:37]And so I started with those two things, with my friend John Storing, with my daughter's imaginary
[6:42]world, and started with this little girl in Vienna, who I knew I wanted to arrive in Bolivia
[6:49]so that she could still adapt more flexibly than her parents could.
[6:53]Wow. Well, now it all sort of makes sense a little. I mean, in the book, it seemed impossible
[6:59]that you hadn't been to some of these places, right? Like your knowledge of, I'm like, she couldn't
[7:05]just be making this up. You must have been there. So what brought you and your family to Bolivia?
[7:09]What were you doing there? Well, at the time, my husband was working for the European Union.
[7:14]My husband is British, and he worked for the British diplomatic service his whole life,
[7:19]and then was on the conment to the European Union when we lived in La Paz. And then after Brexit
[7:27]went back to working for the British Foreign Office, which is got brought us to Uzbekistan.
[7:33]So wow. And how did you begin writing to begin with? Tell me a little more about your memoir,
[7:39]because now I want to go back and read like everything you've written before.
[7:42]Thank you. So I was working as a journalist in New York City, and I got an email from my high
[7:49]school boyfriend saying, how would you like to come train journalists in an impoverished
[7:53]southern Arabian country was how he phrased it? And I wrote back and said, well, you know,
[7:57]could you just give me the name of the country and tell me a little bit more about this?
[8:01]And he ended up coming to New York. And I said, look, I have a good job in New York. I can't just
[8:06]run off to Yemen, but I could come for my remaining vacation days. I had about three weeks left.
[8:12]So he said, that's great. He talked to the editor of the newspaper in Sinai Yemen, and who said,
[8:21]yeah, bring her over. And I said, well, I'll do a training for three weeks. And that's all I can
[8:25]spare. So I went over to Yemen having never been to the Middle East before, having taught myself
[8:29]a few words of Arabic in one of those books called Learn Arabic in 10 minutes a day,
[8:34]kind of things, you know. So I went over to Yemen and met the staff of this newspaper,
[8:41]who amazed me. I had never felt more welcome anywhere in my entire life. I'd never met people
[8:47]who were so eager to learn and to work for me. They treated me as if I were visiting royalty.
[8:53]I mean, the Yemenis were the most hospitable, warm people I'd ever met. And so the owner of the
[8:58]paper said, I love what you're doing with my reporters. Would you be willing to come back as
[9:02]editor-in-chief of the newspaper and turn it into the New York Times? And I said, well,
[9:07]I've never worked for the New York Times. And I'm not sure anyone, you know, in the right
[9:11]mind would want me to run a newspaper. I have no managerial experience. I've never run a newspaper
[9:17]but a journalist for more than a decade. But I hadn't actually run a newsroom, let alone in Yemen.
[9:23]So I went back to New York, thought about it, and realized that actually I didn't want to spend
[9:28]the rest of my life in the same little gray cubicle. So I moved back to Yemen, took the job,
[9:34]which was the most exciting thing I've ever done. It was incredibly challenging, but also
[9:40]incredibly rewarding. And I made such close friends with my reporters that I'm still in touch
[9:45]with almost all of them today. And so that first year I spent working with them was so interesting
[9:52]to me. And I learned so much from them. And I wanted the world, you know, this was 2006.
[10:00]And, you know, like now, there's a lot of bias against Muslims and a lot of bias against
[10:07]Yemenis.
[10:08]And hardly anyone I met in the US could place Yemen on a map.
[10:12]So I just thought I want people to know my staff.
[10:16]I want them to know these Yemenis.
[10:19]And I want them just to meet them and get to know them and realize that the media reports
[10:24]aren't always accurate.
[10:26]So that's how it came to write my first book, which was a memoir of that time I spent
[10:31]running that newspaper.
[10:32]And I ended up, because I ended up meeting my husband and Yemen at the end of that
[10:36]first year, I then ended up living in Yemen for three more years.
[10:40]So my daughter was actually born while we lived there.
[10:42]Wow.
[10:43]Yeah.
[10:44]Okay.
[10:45]So you were a journalist, you lived in Yemen for all this time, you wrote the memoir.
[10:48]And then you switched to fiction and wrote the ambassador's life.
[10:51]Had that happened.
[10:52]And when did you come up with that idea?
[10:56]Do you mind that I'm asking you your whole life?
[10:57]Oh, I'm happy to tell you.
[11:01]So once I met my husband, he was at the time the British ambassador to Yemen.
[11:06]So once I moved in with him, I was suddenly plunged into a deeply surreal universe for
[11:11]me, never having had any contact with diplomatic life.
[11:16]Suddenly, we had bodyguards and we had Scotland yards sleeping in our guest rooms and
[11:23]ministers visiting from the UK.
[11:26]And it was just such an interesting and crazy world that I was suddenly in touch with.
[11:33]And I thought I have to write about this, but I can't write a memoir, because I don't
[11:37]want to destroy my marriage right away.
[11:40]Yeah.
[11:41]I want to make a die of slow and painful death.
[11:45]No, I don't want to make a die at all.
[11:47]No, I'm kidding.
[11:48]I'm kidding.
[11:49]I'm kidding.
[11:50]That was never fun.
[11:51]All right.
[11:52]So that's why I started writing fiction.
[11:54]I thought I want to place something in this world, so I can write about it by from a
[11:57]fictional point of view.
[11:59]But I also was kidnapped while I was six months pregnant when I lived in Yemen.
[12:04]So and that was my third year.
[12:07]So that experience inspired the opening scene of the ambassador's wife, which starts with
[12:12]the kidnapping.
[12:13]And that scene is pretty much how it happened to me.
[12:16]And then having been kidnapped, I then came to the UK to get birth, but moved back to
[12:21]Yemen with my infant daughter, which some people thought was a bit crazy.
[12:25]But then my husband was attacked by a suicide bomber, and we were evacuated.
[12:30]Oh, my gosh.
[12:33]So that's the nut shell version.
[12:36]Wow.
[12:37]Well, I'm glad I asked, because that's not most people's nut shell version.
[12:42]Okay.
[12:43]Wait, back up for a second to the kidnapping.
[12:46]So how do you get over something like that?
[12:49]How do you go?
[12:50]And I don't know how it ended or started or whatever, but I'm assuming it must have been
[12:55]traumatic for you in some way.
[12:57]How do you then pick up and go on or what was it like in a few, you know, the mini version
[13:02]of it?
[13:03]In a way, I think that the fact that I was pregnant actually saved me because I was with,
[13:09]first of all, I was with four other women who were amazing.
[13:13]They were cool as can be.
[13:16]They were protective of me because I was pregnant, a lot of them had lived all over the
[13:20]world.
[13:21]They've been held at gunpoint before.
[13:22]This was not their first experience like this.
[13:25]And so they were so calm and helped me.
[13:30]And there was a moment at which, you know, I thought, we're all going to die.
[13:35]They're going to line us up and execute us.
[13:38]And in my husband's going to lose me, our daughter, and around, you know, in my panicky
[13:44]phase of the kidnapping, I started having cramps and I thought, I'm going to lose her.
[13:51]And I don't want to.
[13:53]And I don't want to miss Kerry in the middle of a country with questionable health care,
[13:58]either.
[13:59]So I said, all right, if I'm going to keep this baby in, I have to calm down.
[14:04]I just have to calm down.
[14:05]So I started doing, thankfully, I had learned how to do yoga breathing.
[14:09]And this is the one time it was really useful to me because I started doing that breathing
[14:15]and doing a little chant to her, just saying, stay in.
[14:20]Just stay right where you are.
[14:22]You're cozy.
[14:23]It's not safe out here.
[14:24]See, you just stay in New York.
[14:27]And I think that saved me.
[14:28]Like I'm not sure I would have been as calm had I not been afraid that if I didn't just
[14:33]learn how to relax, then I was going to lose the baby.
[14:36]And then being with these other women who were incredible.
[14:39]And I had lost my phone in a scuffle with this shake who was holding us hostage and borrowed
[14:45]a phone from someone.
[14:46]Unfortunately, I'd remember my remembered my husband's phone number.
[14:50]And he quickly got the government involved with getting us back.
[14:54]And he was utterly, when I called him, you'd think I called to tell him what was for dinner.
[14:59]He was like, OK, do you have a sat phone with you?
[15:02]Is Muhammad there?
[15:03]Could I talk to him?
[15:05]Who's holding you?
[15:06]Where did you try?
[15:07]Blah, blah, blah.
[15:08]I mean, it was completely, when I got back, I said to him, weren't you worried?
[15:13]And he said, worried, I didn't have time to worry, I had to get you out.
[15:18]So he just goes instantly, I think this is diplomatic training, when there's a crisis,
[15:24]which there are a lot of in diplomatic life, you just have to go straight into solving
[15:28]the problem.
[15:29]You don't have time to freak out.
[15:31]And I've never seen my husband freak out in a situation of stress.
[15:35]So I think that helped.
[15:37]And also these other women, I think just knowing that they were there with me helped a
[15:44]lot.
[15:45]I invited them all for dinner about a month after this happened.
[15:49]And one of them hadn't even told her husband that it had happened.
[15:53]And I thought, how did you explain us being gone for an entire day?
[15:59]And this was interesting insight into someone else's marriage.
[16:04]But just, I don't know, I think the other women were one of the things that kept me calm.
[16:10]I mean, the UK also, they had me write up my experiences and that's the other thing
[16:15]that helped is that right after it happened and I got home and had had a bath, I wrote down
[16:20]every detail of what happened, which is why I was able to come up with the first
[16:24]scene of the book because I already had it written down in first draft form, you know,
[16:28]because I had to turn that into the office so they were aware of exactly how it had
[16:33]unfolded.
[16:34]Wow.
[16:35]Oh my gosh.
[16:37]And now and Hathaway is going to start as you?
[16:40]Well, I think actually, unfortunately that option has expired.
[16:44]Oh, okay.
[16:45]So if anyone out there is interested in the option, it's now reavailable.
[16:50]Okay.
[16:51]These sort of things I suppose happen all the time with film options, so I hear this over
[16:57]and over and over again.
[16:58]Yeah.
[16:59]I was pretty excited about that, so very sad.
[17:02]I'm sorry.
[17:03]Yeah.
[17:04]Well, you know, there were things that could happen, especially now.
[17:08]So I just interviewed Wally Lam on the same show last week and he was really awesome,
[17:14]but his option lasted 15 years for, I know this much is true and they tried to make
[17:20]it all these different ways and he kept getting disappointed and then he finally took
[17:23]the option back and now has just made it into a limited series that just aired last
[17:29]Sunday.
[17:30]Oh gosh.
[17:31]I forgot to watch last night.
[17:32]Well, anyway, the Sunday before this Sunday and it all worked, yeah.
[17:35]So it took a while, but he's like, I'm glad because this is the form that it should
[17:39]be taking and this form wasn't even available then.
[17:41]So also say you never know.
[17:43]Yeah, you really don't ever know.
[17:46]So yeah.
[17:47]So it could happen.
[17:48]We'll see.
[17:49]And you still travel all over the place.
[17:51]You're in London now and you'll live in a snooze back and stand and yeah.
[17:54]Well, I am in London at the moment, but we don't live here.
[17:57]We actually live in Uzbekistan, but about six weeks ago, two months ago, I think it
[18:03]is now.
[18:04]We were evacuated because of this pandemic, even though there were no cases in Uzbekistan
[18:09]when we were evacuated and London was an epicenter of the pandemic, they, you know, I think
[18:17]the foreign office thought, well, if we do get sick, they wanted us to be near British
[18:22]health care.
[18:23]So that was their thinking and sending me and my daughter back here, but we didn't have
[18:28]anywhere to live.
[18:29]So in the middle of this, we suddenly had to find an apartment with two days notice and
[18:34]which we did miraculously through another writer because writers are wonderful people.
[18:40]And so we have somewhere to stay now, but we don't know how long we're here for or when
[18:44]we can see my husband again because he's still in Uzbekistan and our space is closed.
[18:49]Oh my gosh.
[18:50]So we're, we're apart until Uzbek airspace opens and also he's quite busy at the moment.
[18:57]So your life, I mean, your whole life sounds like a movie.
[19:01]I'm glad you keep writing.
[19:02]I can't wait for the next, so you must be working on something else, right?
[19:06]I am.
[19:07]Actually, I'm on the second draft of the next novel, which is completely different from
[19:10]anything I've ever done and is I'm really loving writing.
[19:13]It's mostly in dialogue, which is my favorite someday if I ever grow up, maybe I'll
[19:17]write plays.
[19:18]But for now, I'm doing this as part of, I'm doing a PhD at the moment.
[19:21]And so this is part of the dissertation, but that's right.
[19:24]I read that you were doing PhD and I kept like, I was like, does that really say expected
[19:28]2021?
[19:29]Could she really be getting your PhD now in the middle of all the, how are unbelievable?
[19:35]Well, it wasn't, it wasn't going on when I started, but yeah, but actually, you know,
[19:40]it's been because the University of Birmingham has a distance learning option for the,
[19:45]for this.
[19:46]And I talked to my supervisor every month and he's just the most incredible man and writer
[19:50]that it's for me, it's a huge luxury to do a PhD because to have someone whose job it
[19:56]is to read what I write every month is, you know, that doesn't happen.
[20:00]into most writers. Usually you're just sitting alone in the dark, which is how I've wrote
[20:03]my first few books. So now I've someone to talk to you along the way and it's just great.
[20:08]Wow. So wait, tell me a little, give me a little bit more about this dialogue driven novel.
[20:14]Sure. So it's basically it's about an underground kind of gay slash queer underground in Bolivia,
[20:20]almost exclusively lesbian. So it's it's about this community living underground. And that,
[20:25]again, is based on something I heard about when I was in Bolivia.
[20:28]Even though homosexuality is officially legal, it can still get you killed in Bolivia.
[20:34]So a lot of people who come out are thrown out of their families and abused in all kinds of ways.
[20:42]And some of these people have sought refuge in underneath the city and tunnels underneath the city.
[20:48]So I, again, was wondering, I wonder what that's like. And I've just loved these women that have formed
[20:56]this underground community. I also, you know, the underground genre seems to be so male-dominated.
[21:01]You know, books like Jack Carwack, Subtrainians, and Neil Gaiman's Never Wear, and all these other
[21:06]books about the underground seem to be these very kind of male-undergrads. And all these
[21:09]revolutionary undergrounds are often male. And I thought, what if it were a female space? And how would
[21:15]women try to create revolution without violence? Wow. I am like, you're, I'm following you now
[21:22]here. I'm like, can't wait to see what you write. I'm so excited. Wow. Do you have any advice
[21:28]to aspiring others? I do. I mean, this is advice based on my own experience, I guess, that's inevitable.
[21:34]But for me, what helped me the most was moving somewhere that made me profoundly uncomfortable
[21:40]in a lot of ways and forced me to question a lot of the assumptions I had about how the world worked,
[21:47]how human beings worked, how culture worked. And I've never been the same. I mean, since I left
[21:55]for Yemen in 2006, I haven't lived in the U.S. And living outside of the U.S. for that long,
[22:00]I've learned the ways in which the U.S. shaped me. And that other people are shaped in different
[22:08]ways. And I feel I hope I'm always gaining a broader perspective on kind of from thinking about
[22:15]people more globally than from purely in American lens. And I think that's really a useful
[22:21]thing to do as a writer, is to have to flounder around in somewhere completely foreign and figure
[22:28]things out. And you know, you start to realize things about yourself, you wouldn't realize if you
[22:34]didn't leave your comfortable space. Interesting. Wow. Well, if we can all ever travel again, that sounds
[22:42]great. Not so easy at the moment. But that's okay. I feel like I'm floundering in my own home every
[22:48]day. So, you know, the lots of material in this time. Yeah, you are not alone. You're not alone.
[22:56]Yes. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for coming on my podcast and this show and
[23:02]for exile music, which I can't wait to finish and for introducing me to your
[23:07]to your really interesting one of the kind life. So, what a treat. Thank you so much for having me
[23:12]on. It's a real pleasure. Okay. Take care. You see your husband's in. Yeah, thank you.
[23:19]Thank you. Good bye. Bye. Thanks so much to listening to fiction Friday, part of the July
[23:26]book blast of mom's no time to read books. I hope that you found some really great reads this
[23:31]week. All five days I've launched tons of episodes so that I can entertain you and you can connect
[23:37]with stories and just feel a little better in the world knowing that these stories exist and that
[23:42]these authors are out there. So, I hope you enjoyed all of these fiction Friday episodes and that
[23:48]you had a great day and I hope you have a really great weekend and come back next week because
[23:52]I'm doing one more week, one more five days, I should say, of another July book blast week
[23:58]and I'll have five new fun days then and then back to normal. But anyway, you can have a little like
[24:03]binge podcast fest or something. Anyway, have a great weekend. Thanks again for listening to my
[24:09]podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on
[24:15]Instagram at zippyowans and at moms don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list
[24:20]at zippyowans.com so you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot.
[24:25]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check out my
[24:29]summer beach bundle at page one books.com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for
[24:35]the sound editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[24:40]out trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zippyowans.com.