Helen Oyeyemi, 39, was born in Nigeria and raised in London. One of Granta’s best young British novelists in 2013, she’s the author of 10 books, including Mr Fox, Gingerbread and Peaces, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize for experimental fiction. Her new novel, Parasol Against the Axe – her first to be set in Prague, her home since 2014 – takes place during a weekend hen party involving a book whose text changes every time it’s opened. The Australian critic Beejay Silcox has called Oyeyemi “a bamboozler, a discombobulator, a peddler of perplexity… there are few writers who can match her creative glee”.
Where did Parasol Against the Axe begin?
In other books. Being a writer isn’t my whole personality: when I packed up all my things and moved here, it was just where I wanted to live – as Helen, not as a writer, and not even really as a reader. But then I was given Magic Prague, a book by [Angelo Maria] Ripellino, this long, wonderful love letter to the city. Reading about the surrealists Breton and Apollinaire visiting the street next to mine, I saw I wasn’t an anomaly: a lot of people have become irrationally entwined with Prague out of the blue. Then when I read Vítězslav Nezval’s poems about the city, I knew I had to add to this body of work about Prague. But trying to persuade Prague to be written about wasn’t easy.
What made it so challenging?
Prague doesn’t want to be put into anyone’s story; so many people have come and tried to make it part of this or that empire, and it hasn’t worked. I had to say: “I’m not making a portrait of you, OK? I’m just going to tell some stories where you’re in the background.” The book began to form out of that negotiation. I felt almost at my limit with how much and how rapidly I was inventing, reeling off all this seemingly factual stuff with Borges-like conviction when it has no basis in actuality.
Did that feel different to how you usually work?
I was nervous because I was addressing this place that I know I love when I don’t know how it feels about me. But that’s actually also how I feel about writing and literature: it’s what I want to do but I don’t know if I’m receiving any affection back! Every time I finish writing a book, I’m just like, OK, here come all the people running to say they don’t like it. Sometimes I’ve looked at Amazon reviews and there’s one that says: “How can a writer like this eat?”
The Times Literary Supplement likened the experience of reading Peaces to “babysitting an overindulged child”.
A Czech friend was so delighted to show that to me. I prefer a nasty review if it’s built on some kind of understanding of the project’s parameters. When a negative Czech review of Gingerbread accused me of being obsessed with form over content, I felt seen. It sounds ungrateful but I prefer that to the kind of praise that’s like being patted on the head: “Oh, she does storytelling.” Well, yeah! I should hope so. Everybody writing fiction does that.
A line in Parasol Against the Axe says we can’t understand Prague without speaking Czech. How’s yours these days?
I’ve already got enough on my plate with English! I can complain about a gas bill but living here has taught me to be OK with not really understanding that much or being understood, because I realised it translates to so many of my experiences in English as well. It’s weird being a human who likes other humans mediated through art; when actual humans are in front of me, I’m just like, nooo.
Have you always felt that way?
“When did you first realise you prefer people in art?!” Maybe reading José Saramago made me feel warm towards people. Also, watching Doctor Who: I love the idea of this alien, who actually has got nothing to do with us, consistently sticking up for humans. I’m like, “Why would you? Why?” But he can. It made me see things in a new light.
As a reader, how do you know when a novel is for you?
I avoid synopses: I just open the book and look at a few sentences to decide. Because – yes! – I am all about the way it’s told, not subject matter; anyone can tell me anything as long as they say it in a way I like. But that also makes me very impressionable in certain ways.
So are there writers whose style you enjoy but who then leave you uncomfortable?
Witold Gombrowicz [the 20th-century Polish author of The Possessed] is one. The sense of almost magnetic resistance as my mind is pushed and pushed makes for a really pleasurable reading experience, but I suspect the overall sentiment [of his work] is kind of hierarchical, where there are good and worthy people or states of being, and despicable ones to be ground under the heel; that’s not the way my own mind is organised. Kundera’s another. Sometimes he talks as if he looks down on people who watch a lot of TV. I’m like, “But that’s me!” And he’s like, “Yeah, you’re trashy minded.”
What have you enjoyed reading recently?
I had a lot of fun with Practice by Rosalind Brown [out in March, about a student writing an essay]. I think only she and Proust can get me into the space where I’m happy to read about someone walking across a room for all these pages. You’re reading about reading; you have to be really good to do that in a compelling way.
Was there a book that inspired you to write?
I talk about my moment with Ali Smith’s Hotel World so much that I don’t want to embarrass her again. Just taking three days off sick from school to read it under the covers… the way it begins with an ending, ahhhhh! And just every sentence of it.
Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi will be published on 1 February by Faber (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
