OK: While we’re speaking about literary reportage, what’s more important: a talent for narrative or a talent for collecting facts?

WJ: Both of them. The book should be ready in my head before I start to [write]. There’s a third thing that is very important for me: to write a book, I need to have [a] clear picture in my imagination. I never thought that I would tell the story of Georgia or Chechnya.

About Chechnya, for example, I had a lot of stuff to write about but there was no key, no main subject. [I thought], ‘what should this book be about — the Chechens? How many books about Chechen history do we already have?’ In 1999, when [rebel leader Shamil] Basayev invaded [The Republic of] Dagestan we went there, and we were going to Botlikh, the village that he occupied. On the way to Botlikh, we passed the village where [19th century Chechen leader] Imam Shamil was born. There was a huge stone by the road with the inscription, “You cannot be a hero if you think about the consequences.” And I thought, ‘This is it. I’ll write about this.’

So, the first book, about the Trans-Caucasus, was about freedom, expectation, reality, and disappointments. Chechnya was this kind of thing. Towers of Stone has two parts. One is how I lived with a Chechen family in occupied Chechnya, the other part is about [former president Aslan] Maskhadov and Basayev. Maskhadov, the president of Chechnya, was a man of consequences. He was the most responsible man I ever met. And Basayev was quite the opposite; he didn’t care about the consequences. If a chair was not good for him, he would throw it away. He didn’t care. They respected Maskhadov but they loved Basayev, because he was this dzhigit, this hero.

Whenever I start a book, I need something like this, something universal. [I need] the first sentence and the last sentence. I don’t see any sense in writing books that are only about today. We have the U.S. presidential campaign. I could write a book about Mitt Romney, but [what] if he loses? What [would] this book [be] all about [then]? Everybody will forget about this in half a year. So, and it’s not arrogance, I’m thinking about the book like this. It should be [about] today, [but the present day] in ten years. Books for me are something much different than a journalist’s report.

OK: How do you choose characters?

WJ: For the books or reportage I try to find stories that are the most universal [and] that would tell you [the most] about universal drama. For example, in Armenia I wrote a story for my first book about a guy who was an intellectual living in Yerevan during the deep, enormous crisis [that] they had in the beginning of the ’90s. No heating, no electricity, nothing. And to survive the winter, he was burning books just to [keep] himself [warm]. So, you can understand the drama of him: he was born, he was brought up, and he was educated to be an Armenian intellectual. There was no need for any intellectuals in Armenia at that time because everyone was doing business or was involved in politics or in war. Intellectuals…they didn’t need such people. So, they were emigrating, but he didn’t want to emigrate. [Instead], he was selecting books: which was the first to be burned, the second one, the third one. And his poetry, he had two or three tomes of his own poetry, were the last ones [to be burned]. When I met him, I said, “This can happen everywhere.” It was a story about desperation.

So, it is not a big problem; there are many interesting stories that are very local and only for today, funny stories, tragic stories, but I try to find stories that will be interesting [whether] I told you [them] today, ten years ago, or in five years.

GALO: You combine different characters for the purpose of the narrative into Samuel, Nora, and Jackson in Night Wanderers. It makes the narrative easier to follow and it almost makes the story into a fable. It’s not just about the child soldiers of Uganda, it’s about children everywhere.

WJ: That’s what I wanted to do, really. My newest book will again be like that. I don’t care very much if it is fiction or nonfiction. I want to tell my story; about Uganda, about South Africa, about any other place in the world. This is a big discussion in Poland, and not only in Poland, if it is nonfiction, everything should be facts — real names, real situations. I agree with this 100 percent when you’re talking about journalism. But I want to tell my story, and it’s very personal. For example, in my newest book, I write about private people and I keep in mind that my story could hurt them. These characters are from a very small place, and I don’t know, today maybe they’ll be happy they’re in the book, but what will happen to them in two weeks?

Does it really matter if I put their real names or if I will change the name? I would [cite] this example: Truman Capote’s, In Cold Blood. It’s one of the best books I’ve read. He could write the book as a journalist’s report, and it’s more or less a journalist’s report, but he decided to add something more. I would like my books to go [in] this direction. This book about South Africa is my first try to write like In Cold Blood.

Fables [are] okay with me. I cannot write fiction because my mind is so focused on my previous job. I can write about what I’ve seen, and I can try to put it in a different perspective.

OK: Don’t you think you’ve moved from journalist to writer by constructing these composite characters?

WJ: Yes. I would never put together these composite reports for the newspaper.

GALO: There’s a part in the book when you talk about Lakwena, which the Acholi people in Uganda believe to be a reincarnation of the Holy Spirit. This is such an essential part of the story if you really want to understand what’s going on there, but it’s something that probably you couldn’t put in a newspaper.

WJ: Never. Well, maybe I could put it in, but in one sentence. What would I say? “The Acholi people hold traditional beliefs,” and that’s all. How could I explain to my readers or my editors that the spirits play such an important part in this conflict or this political situation? On the other hand, I’m not an anthropologist, so I cannot write such detailed stuff professionally. As a journalist and as a writer, I couldn’t ignore that it is really important. At least part of the people really believes that some of these things are happening. This is the reality. I have to write about it. First of all, I have to try to understand as much as is possible for me, for an outsider, and then write it in a way that it’s not [presented as a] joke; it’s not as if I started to believe in Lakwena’s existence. I was trying to find the proper perspective, but ignoring this is stupid, because otherwise you don’t explain everything, or you miss a big part of the explanation.

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