Emma Madden talks to Jonathan Stroud about wizards, djinnis and unlikely heroes.

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Giving Bartimaeus the first person narration positions him as the central character. Is he the character you wish the reader to identify with the most?

 Interesting question. In a way, yes, I suppose Bartimaeus is the most charismatic character, because the story is a first person narrative and his voice is so humorous. He provides the lodestone which the reader follows. Having said that, he is not human and that’s also important. He can’t be expected to develop in quite the way that a human protagonist can, although he does alter in the three books. It is important to have Nathaniel and Kitty as alternative protagonists to follow I think. Obviously Nathaniel is a tricky one, as he leans towards the dark side for much of the trilogy. In a way Kitty is the most straightforward heroic figure of the three. From the point of view of the reader, you are likely to identify with the human characters, while enjoying Bartimaeus more. So you win on both counts, I suppose.

Yes, I found Nathaniel’s moral journey very moving. I

n a way, Nathaniel is the main character of the series, because it is his moral progression that binds the three books. In Book Three, the really important movement is his redemption that slowly and rather painfully occurs. That is then bound up with the naming theme again, as in the first half of the third book we refer to him as John Mandrake. Essentially, he has become an unpleasant adult magician, but in the second half he just manages to claw his way back and become Nathaniel again, which is essential for his moral redemption. I’m pleased you found it moving. I always planned that he would have a heroic finale, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off until I wrote it.

Did you plan the ending before you started writing?

Yes, pretty much. Although, I did have a plan B, where everyone would live happily ever after… I had that up my sleeve in case I found that I couldn’t write my intended ending. However, when I did get there, I didn’t have the problem. Endings are tricky, particularly in a trilogy, where you are wrapping up the whole thing.

Can you tell us about Nathaniel and Kitty’s relationship?

 I was treading carefully there. I wouldn’t want to have written anything more concrete about their relationship. Throughout the trilogy, the three characters are constantly circling round each other, bonded by certain things, even admiration in Bartimaeus, hidden under the hostility and sarcasm. In the third book, I wanted the focus to become tightly orientated around the relationships of these three characters. Often big trilogies end with earth shattering events and after a while it can be quite hard to identify with the characters. I consciously tried to make it small scale.

 Arrogance and vanity, although amusing, are the negative traits of most of your magicians (and djinnis). Is there any significance to those characteristics?

Well, I think the books are really about power and the imbalance of power. A lot of fantasy books show characters wielding power, of one sort or another. Traditionally heroes seem to be able to wield it fairly easily. In children’s fiction particularly, you have heroic magicians, like Gandalf, who are tremendously virtuous. I wanted to experiment, so that the humans with power would not be virtuous and so that I could explore the down side of having power up your sleeve. Nathaniel is the key character. He is quite idealistic in Book 1, but as he grows up the corruption around him accentuates his natural arrogance and vanity and these qualities become more extreme. The parallel in the real world is that no matter who you are there is the danger of the powerful becoming the elite. I don’t want any of these points to become didactic. It’s just a question of having issues floating around under the surface, which the readers can pick up on if they choose. You seem to be turning elements of the fantasy genre around.

Was there something in particular you wanted to bring to this genre of writing?

 Yes, very consciously. I used to read a lot of Fantasy as a child, and after a while I got a bit bored, because I’d find the same trope coming up time and again. They can often be bland and over simplify good and evil: so the good guys are beautiful and the bad guys are hideous. I loved Tolkein when I was a kid, and it’s because he was so powerful, that a lot of other writers followed him unthinkingly. If you’re going to write in that genre now, you have to have something new to say. My idea was to have a contemporary Britain with magicians who were politicians, and who were going to be – generally speaking – bad. In traditional high fantasy, which adults read, magicians are usually virtuous. I think it is a more likely scenario if they have magical powers and use them for their own ends.

Your trilogy appeals to both adults and children. Do you consider it to be children’s literature?

It’s a very current question for me. I’m presently becoming more interested in who is reading it, having finished writing the trilogy. As I hoped, it’s quite a broad range from 8 and 9 year olds to adults of any age. I think it is children’s fiction as the language is accessible to them and the subject matter is dealt with quite lightly, which is always important. I always wanted it to appeal to adults too. A lot of great writing crosses over between younger and older readers. That is the way it should it be. There’s nothing wrong with breaking barriers down.

 Many adults, who don’t read adult fantasy, do read children’s fantasy. Why might that be?

That’s a good point. I suppose fantasy is an intriguing genre, because it is very closely tied to folk tales, fairy tales and myth and legends, all of which are of universal significance. It’s true that fairy tales have, in recent years, been somewhat infantilised; but fundamentally they deal with sex, death and all the universal human issues. I don’t think it is surprising that fantasy books appeal to adults, as you are likely to be bringing up ideas out of that pot. I think it’s important that writers continue to invigorate the genre and prevent it from becoming too whimsical. The lightness of fairy stories delights me and a lot of adult fiction is dry, weighty and can be tedious. If you encounter a story which is light, fast and well told then it is entirely readable. That is why children’s fiction is enjoying such popularity. If it’s a good story, adults will find that it’s worth reading as well.

You clearly have a strong background in literature and literary traditions. How did you research for this trilogy?

 It’s true that for years, I’ve read a lot in this area; magical tales, fantastic fiction of one sort or another, with an increasing emphasis on the folk tales and the literary precedents of a lot of modern fantasy. If I look around my study, I have a whole host of all of these books, and the great thing about Bartimaeus is that he’s constantly name dropping and yet he never gives much detail. The beauty of that is that I can sit there with a vague memory of something that I’ve read at some point, without too much concern, because I’m not actually called upon to expand or justify.

What are your future writing plans? Do you intend to stay in the same genre?

Well I don’t really know, which is quite nice. It’s quite a refreshing thing to say. Bartimaeus has been a four year project: it’s been fairly intense. It’s nice now to have liberation from that; to be able to sit down and write something else. Day to day I’m having thoughts about all kinds of different genres, and thinking about which ones I should have a go with. I’ve been doing a lot of promoting of the book over the last couple of months, and that will continue into January. Perhaps then I’ll feel a little more nervous. It’s funny, because it’s been 3 or 4 months since I finished Ptolemy’s Gate, and I’m really starting to get the itch to sit down and create something else. It’s great to have that coming back again. The success of Bartimaeus has given me the freedom to potentially try something quite different. I don’t think I would write a trilogy straight away. It would be nice to try something a little more minimalist to refresh other parts of my writing. It’s exciting!

Thank you Jonathan Stroud for talking to Write Away.