How to write a Booker contender – by Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and others | Books | The Guardian

Chigozie Obioma

I came to the story that would become An Orchestra of Minorities after I witnessed the tragic shattering of an individual whose name was Jay. I was at a university in northern Cyprus in 2009 when he arrived, having been deceived by scammers masquerading as foreign university agents. This man would crumble inwards and fall into a deep psychological crisis that would culminate in a violent death days later - a head-first fall from a tall building. In the days before that fall, Jay had told me he'd come to Cyprus because he was deeply in love with a woman. That knowledge first led me to try to explore what the dynamic may have been between him and his betrothed. What kind of love would make a person sell all they have to be with their lover? So I tried to retrace his journey, an Odyssey of some sort in which my protagonist Chinonso would be sustained for a long time by the reality of love, but ultimately destroyed by the mythology of love.