In his latest novel The Predicament, William Boyd returns to the Cold War with the reluctant spy Gabriel Dax. Moving from the streets of Guatemala to Berlin, Boyd blends history, espionage, and the human condition with his trademark style. We spoke with him about the origins of Dax, the pull of espionage fiction, and the shadow of Graham Greene.
AFG: The Predicament takes Gabriel Dax from Guatemala in the early 1960s to the shadowy streets of Berlin. What drew you to set this story against these particular historical backdrops?
WB: I became very interested in CIA meddling in Central America in the 1950s and 60s when I read somewhere that the assassination of President Armas in Guatemala in 1957 looked like a “dry run” for the assassination of JFK. In other words, it was a CIA/Mafia hit. In fact, Gabriel Dax has his origins in a TV series I was commissioned to write by the BBC. The brief was a Cold War spy series and so I invented this character, a travel writer, and sent him off to various hot spots in Central America including Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, etc. The series was never made but the notion stuck with me, and so when I came to ponder writing a Cold War spy trilogy I decided to revisit these historical moments and weave them into my fiction.
AFG: Dax is a reluctant spy — a travel writer pulled into the world of intelligence. What interests you about exploring espionage through the eyes of someone who isn’t a professional spy by nature?
WB: Precisely because I have no insider knowledge about the world of the espionage services. Consequently, I feel I have to write about accidental or reluctant spies – a protagonist that the reader can easily identify with rather than a seasoned espionage professional. I also feel that the tropes of a spy’s life – duplicity, betrayal, mendacity, change of identity and so forth – are the tropes of the human condition. We’ve all lied and been lied to, we’ve all betrayed people and been betrayed, we all change our identity to some degree as it suits us. I think this is why literary novelists – especially in the UK – are drawn to the spy genre. It reflects the human condition, but “writ large,” and with more at stake. The list of British and Irish writers who’ve written spy novels is long and distinguished: Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, Lawrence Durrell, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Dunmore, John Banville – to name a few.
AFG: The novel engages with the CIA, MI6, and the political tensions of the Cold War. How do you balance weaving real historical forces with fictional characters and plots?
WB: It’s something I do in all my fiction. I’m a realistic novelist and I want the world of my novels to be utterly convincing and authentic. One way of achieving this is to introduce real people and real events into your fiction. It is wonderfully liberating because you’re writing a fiction and so you can go where no historian or journalist would dare to venture.
AFG: Faith Green, Dax’s MI6 handler, is a striking presence. How do you see her relationship with Dax evolving in this second book?
WB: It’s getting more intense and more passionate. Gabriel is, he recognises, emotionally in thrall to Faith Green. But Faith, though she uses Gabriel when it suits her, is also becoming attracted to him. I think she also enjoys the sex they have together. There’s a powerful physical side to their relationship as well as the darker complications. It’s mutually addictive, in its way.
AFG: You’ve written in many forms — literary novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, even a James Bond continuation. How does writing the Gabriel Dax novels compare with your other work?
WB: I would say exactly the same. I approach the Dax novels in exactly the way I’ve approached my other novels. I don’t change style or voice at all – I just happen to have moved into a genre.
AFG: Some readers have noted echoes of le Carré in your spy fiction, but your style also feels distinctly your own. Who are the writers, in or out of the espionage genre, who shaped how you approached The Predicament?
WB: I’m an admirer of le Carré, but not an uncritical one. I’ve written about his work at length. I also like Len Deighton’s early spy novels – The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin – but I don’t see any direct influence. Graham Greene is another writer I admire but there’s no sense that I’m channelling him or any of the other writers I happen to like.
AFG: When you’re working with such charged periods of history — coups, assassinations, Cold War brinkmanship — do you begin with research, or with a sense of character and story?
WB: Character first – and then I evolve the story in great detail, blocking it out chapter by chapter before I start writing. Once I have the narrative shape I can do all the research I need to make the story authentic and plausible.
AFG: Gabriel Dax seems caught between two worlds: the ordinary life of a writer and the dangerous, manipulative world of espionage. Do you see him as a man constantly resisting his fate, or as someone who has already accepted that espionage will define him?
WB: He definitely chafes against the world that he’s been dragged into. He’s always looking for a way out, a way to return to his own life. But as Faith Green regularly reminds him, “Nobody quits in this business.” He has an awful premonition that his double life is here to stay.
AFG: Looking ahead, do you envision the Dax novels as a long-running series, or do you see them as a more contained exploration of a few pivotal moments in his life?
WB: I do enjoy writing spy novels. When I finish the Dax trilogy I’ll have written six (the other three are Restless, Solo and Waiting for Sunrise). There are other novels that I want to write but I have a feeling that Gabriel Dax may reappear before too long.
AFG: You’ve often been compared to Graham Greene — espionage, politics, moral ambiguity. Do you welcome that comparison, or does it feel like a literary shadow you’re always having to wrestle with?
WB: I’ve written a great deal about Greene, given lectures on his work, written a screenplay of one of his novels and have read almost everything he has written. I’m drawn to him as a consummate professional novelist – he’s a great exemplar. If there’s an overlap it’s the geographical range of his writing that I think I share. Maybe because I was born and raised in West Africa I see the world as my oyster. Of course, Greene’s upbringing was entirely bourgeois and British. But he was drawn to “abroad” as am I – but for different reasons.
AFG: Greene once said every writer has a “splinter of ice in the heart.” Do you agree with that? And if so, what’s yours?
WB: I would phrase it differently. Once you identify yourself as a novelist – at whatever age that occurs – then there’s an abiding self-consciousness that arrives as you look at the world and its people and assess your own experience. Everything – banal or dramatic – can become grist to your writerly mill. But you’re also a human being and you can banish that self-consciousness immediately if something – good or bad – turns your life upside down. But then it always returns, later.
AFG: Your novels move so fluidly between continents. Do you find yourself writing better when you’re in London, France, or somewhere entirely unexpected?
WB: I can write pretty much anywhere. 95% of it occurs at my homes in London or rural France. I can write on planes or in pubs and cafés or libraries. I don’t need silence or solitude.
AFG: After all the careful research and historical detail, do you ever just want to let Dax have a quiet book about, say, missing his train or ordering the wrong meal in a restaurant?
WB: I think you get that with Gabriel, anyway. His life as a writer is also dealt with. He meets his editor, they have a drink together. Gabriel gets ideas for books. He researches his books. He meets other writers. His diurnal, ordinary life is never far away.
AFG: You’ve written literary fiction, thrillers, comedies, screenplays — if you were forced to choose just one form for the rest of your career, which would you keep and which would you gladly toss aside?
WB: I’m without doubt principally a literary novelist. I moonlight in other worlds – theatre, film, radio, TV and, most recently, opera – because I enjoy collaborating and I think it’s good for me as an individual to work with and meet other people in the world of the arts. However, if I had to abandon one ancillary profession it would be screenwriting. I’ve had some 20 films that I’ve written produced – a good record in that profession – but the mind-boggling frustrations of that world would not be missed.
AFG: Readers love Gabriel Dax for being fallible — he’s not James Bond. Do you ever find yourself tempted to give him a bit of Bond-style glamour, or is his ordinariness exactly the point?
WB: No. It’s his “everyman” qualities that make him intriguing, I think. I feel readers can identify with him and understand his motivations precisely because he’s not some daredevil super-spy. Readers think – that’s exactly what I would do or feel, or how I would react.
AFG: Writers are sometimes described as spies themselves — observing, listening, never quite belonging. Do you think that’s true of you?
WB: I think that’s true – see my earlier comment about self-consciousness. I think we do look at the world forensically, as a spy does. We are looking for material – a spy is trying not to get caught. But the gimlet eye is the same: novelists notice things that other people don’t.
AFG: Finally, if you could sit down with Greene in some dimly lit bar and ask him one thing about the business of writing, what would it be?
WB: I think I would quiz him about his daily writing routine. I think he said somewhere that he couldn’t write more than 800 words a day. I’m not sure I believe that. I’d pin him down.
AFG: When readers finish The Predicament, what do you most hope lingers with them — the historical sweep, the intrigue, or something more personal about Gabriel Dax himself?
WB: I hope it’s a collection of pleasures that lingers: the intrigue and compelling nature of the story; the realistic three-dimensionality of Gabriel and the other characters; the evocation of sense of place and period; the precision and limpidity of the writing. I believe there’s an unspoken contract between novelist and reader. The reader parts with money and time when she or he reads a novel – the recompense should be a level of sheer enjoyment, sophisticated or elemental. Time (and money) well spent in a world I have created. A fair deal!
William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series. His books have won many literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the Costa Book Award. He was named a Granta Best Young Novelist in 1983, and in 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Boyd is married and divides his time between London and southwest France
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