Ian Kemish

So there's, you know, a real affection.

And there's also, you know, that age-old principle, write what you know.

So combining these two made sense in that way.

Yeah.

There's more authenticity, again, than people might first expect about that idea that people with carrying trauma from the Balkans wash up on the edge of Europe, on the western edge of the Atlantic.

A good friend of mine served as a...

An investigator with the International Criminal Court was more involved a bit later than the period I'm talking about when the focus was on former Yugoslavia.

He was more active during the Rwanda phase, if I can call it that.

Anyway, I mean...

And early on in the development of this idea, I was having a conversation with him and I mentioned this idea and he said, you know what, I have taken witness statements from Rwandan survivors inside the Arctic Circle.

And I said, holding my fingers together in the hope that he gave me the answer I was looking for, I said, why?

And he said, because they run as far as they can.

And I said...

I was struck by it, but I also was having a little eureka moment inside because this was the idea that I had.

So there's some authenticity to it.

And like I say, this is where these troubled souls meet some, well, let's face it, extremely eccentric characters, but who are also kind.

And, you know, by the way...

More than half of them are based very firmly on members of my family or, you know, characters I have known.

So there's some truth in it.

This slowly unpeels early in the book, so I don't think it's too much of a reveal.