Mirza Waheed: On Bringing Books Back to Life

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Kashmir. His debut novel, The Collaborator, was an international bestseller, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the Shakti Bhatt Prize, and long listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize. It was also a Book of the Year for The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Financial Times, Business Standard and The Telegraph (India), among others. Find him on Twitter and Instagram.

In this post, Mirza discusses the process of writing and republishing his novel, Tell Her Everything, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: Mirza Waheed
Literary agent: Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander Associates, London
Book title: Tell Her Everything
Publisher: Melville House
Release date: February 7, 2023
Genre/category: Literary fiction, psychological thriller
Previous titles: The Collaborator, The Book of Gold Leaves
Elevator pitch for the book: How far will a doctor employed in an oil rich monarchy go in pursuit of happiness? What is the cost to his wife and daughter?

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A conversation with a doctor friend during which he talked about the difficult tasks that A&E doctors might undertake sometimes. It made me think about what might happen when a medical professional is asked to fulfil a role in the criminal justice system.

I had the germ of the novel—a father rehearsing what he will say, reveal, to his only child whom he hasn’t met in many years—in my head for quite some time. I started writing the book soon after my daughter was born. She is seven now.

It took around four years. The writing was slow as I tried to inhabit the mind of a retired medical doctor living alone in an expensive apartment by the Thames. While the central premise of the novel didn’t change much, the novel grew as a family story.

Despite being an instrument of the state in its penal system, Dr Kaiser is a perfectly normal human being who loves his family; he’s a father who would do anything for his daughter, and a husband who misses his wife every day. He listens to Billie Holiday and likes red wine.

Tell Her Everything was first published in India in 2019 and it won the prestigious Hindu Prize for Fiction. Then Amazon suddenly shut down the publisher Westland Books and the novel, like all other others, was pulped.

For a while then, the novel only existed in its French edition. But now, thanks to Melville House, it has been brought back from the dead.

I found the form of this novel both challenging and fascinating. An imagined conversation during which the narrator rehearses what he will say to his daughter and what she will say in response.

He wants to draw a self-portrait so that she has his whole story in front of her when judging him. He gives us an account of his life and also reports on the lives of others around him. But how much will he reveal? How will he phrase his account of an eventful but unconventional professional life?

In many ways, he invents a real character, his own daughter, and gives her a voice. The idea of the daughter’s letters that he may or may not have read surprised me.

The book tries to portray an ordinary man confronting his life choices and his “compromised” humanity. Even the most ordinary and gentle person among us is capable of terrible acts.

Dr K reflects on his life and the choices he made in his dogged pursuit of material prosperity. He feels enormous retrospective guilt, he is at a point of moral exhaustion, and yet, he wants to be seen as a good, loving parent.

I’d like the reader to get a sense of a tender father–daughter relationship. Equally, the complex life of an economic migrant—how the world sometimes forces difficult life choices on those who have left their homes.

Revise the hell out of that draft and do not rush your story.

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