He laughs, “the way the world is today, it might be better to do that. Today people sort facts to suit their prejudices and that is very alarming, people believe what they want to believe, and it’s interesting to write fiction looking back at other ages of unreason. Looking back on it, most of my books have been about the collapse of civilisations. We shouldn’t be complacent, believing things will go on as they always have. We’re living in a time of great flux and I don’t want to be partisan or superior about the past. In Act of Oblivion I don’t choose sides. It was an epic event. The English, of all people, cut off their king’s head and declared a republic, long before the French and the Russians. It was a staggering war across the fields of England about who controls your country and how you worship your god.
“The constitutional settlement that followed led to the liberation of thought, entrepreneurialism and to England expanding as a world power.”
The book opens in 1660, the year “an act of free and general pardon, indemnity, and oblivion” was passed by the English parliament to pardon anyone who committed crimes on either side during the English civil war. Only those involved in the regicide of Charles I were to be punished, as they most brutally were, and Harris does not shy away from depicting them: “The irony of these English settlers looking down on who they regarded as the ‘heathen’ native Americans while they come from a country that castrates and disembowels living human beings for the entertainment of a mob.”
Harris believes that ancient act has lessons for today and SA. “No individual or nation can escape their history, but this act was really a 17th-century truth and reconciliation operation. We agree there has been a bloody conflict for the best part of 20 years, that it should come to an end, and we agree to cancel the reckoning and to make a new start — pretty much what happened in South Africa, and it worked. Oliver Cromwell left a family behind, his sons were not molested and lived on to old age. I would think that offers hope to SA, that this can be a pretty firm foundation after a bloody, destructive civil war, and they were able to go forward with a functioning democracy that’s lasted 350 years.”
Harris is living his childhood dreams. “As a boy I used to make imaginary countries and cities and draw maps of them. And today that has become my career. I am the absolute opposite of a magical realist; I bring journalistic reality to the past, like a reporter with a notebook in 17th-century America.”
He gets bored if he’s not writing. “It’s not a kind of profession. It’s a habit of life. In the mornings I just come in and play with words until something catches. And I think, now I can do it again — this wonderful business of invention that has been all my life.
“Stories are universal, politics is universal, and I hope that wherever people live there is a common delight in human beings and their stories. What I hate most is certainty and ideologues of either side. So the world today is a difficult place for people like me.”
No escaping our history
Robert Harris believes ancient acts have lessons for today
Image: Supplied
Act of Oblivion ★★★★
Robert Harris
Penguin Random House SA
An intriguing brass lectern stands in the corner of Robert Harris’ study. An eagle holds the reading platform on its wings, while its head and sharp beak peer over him as he speaks. An artefact of tradition, elegance and keen sightedness, it seems exactly right for an author who has hunted down such gripping stories from within history’s distant layers.
A lanky, gracious man, he radiates a generous presence at the desk in his book-lined study.
He is the author of 14 best-selling novels. His latest, Act of Oblivion, explores the 1660s after the restoration of the English monarchy and the search for justice and revenge that followed the execution of King Charles I in 1649 at the height of Oliver Cromwell’s revolution.
It began though, with a very 21st-century experience: “I saw a tweet about the greatest manhunt of the 17th century and it pricked my interest. I looked it up; I liked the idea of a chase, but it didn’t have a man hunter, so my first idea was to invent a character in pursuit of these two men on the run for the execution of Charles I through the landscape of New England. It touched on lots of issues, landscape, characters and theology. I devoted nearly two years to writing it.”
Harris remains a journalist at heart. “But having found I can make a living writing fiction, I prefer to do that, living in my own head.”
Image: Supplied
He laughs, “the way the world is today, it might be better to do that. Today people sort facts to suit their prejudices and that is very alarming, people believe what they want to believe, and it’s interesting to write fiction looking back at other ages of unreason. Looking back on it, most of my books have been about the collapse of civilisations. We shouldn’t be complacent, believing things will go on as they always have. We’re living in a time of great flux and I don’t want to be partisan or superior about the past. In Act of Oblivion I don’t choose sides. It was an epic event. The English, of all people, cut off their king’s head and declared a republic, long before the French and the Russians. It was a staggering war across the fields of England about who controls your country and how you worship your god.
“The constitutional settlement that followed led to the liberation of thought, entrepreneurialism and to England expanding as a world power.”
The book opens in 1660, the year “an act of free and general pardon, indemnity, and oblivion” was passed by the English parliament to pardon anyone who committed crimes on either side during the English civil war. Only those involved in the regicide of Charles I were to be punished, as they most brutally were, and Harris does not shy away from depicting them: “The irony of these English settlers looking down on who they regarded as the ‘heathen’ native Americans while they come from a country that castrates and disembowels living human beings for the entertainment of a mob.”
Harris believes that ancient act has lessons for today and SA. “No individual or nation can escape their history, but this act was really a 17th-century truth and reconciliation operation. We agree there has been a bloody conflict for the best part of 20 years, that it should come to an end, and we agree to cancel the reckoning and to make a new start — pretty much what happened in South Africa, and it worked. Oliver Cromwell left a family behind, his sons were not molested and lived on to old age. I would think that offers hope to SA, that this can be a pretty firm foundation after a bloody, destructive civil war, and they were able to go forward with a functioning democracy that’s lasted 350 years.”
Harris is living his childhood dreams. “As a boy I used to make imaginary countries and cities and draw maps of them. And today that has become my career. I am the absolute opposite of a magical realist; I bring journalistic reality to the past, like a reporter with a notebook in 17th-century America.”
He gets bored if he’s not writing. “It’s not a kind of profession. It’s a habit of life. In the mornings I just come in and play with words until something catches. And I think, now I can do it again — this wonderful business of invention that has been all my life.
“Stories are universal, politics is universal, and I hope that wherever people live there is a common delight in human beings and their stories. What I hate most is certainty and ideologues of either side. So the world today is a difficult place for people like me.”
Click here to buy Act of Oblivion.
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