Nicola Sturgeon and bestselling author Louise Welsh took a moment at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to send a message of solidarity to Sir Salman Rushdie after he was attacked in the US.
The pair took to the main stage in Central Hall on Monday to discuss Welsh’s latest crime novel, The Second Cut – the highly anticipated sequel to her debut The Cutting Room.
Before their discussion, Ms Sturgeon said a few words about Sir Salman, 75, who suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and eye after being stabbed at an event in upstate New York last week.
“The thoughts of all of us are now with a great writer of our time, Salman Rushdie, who over the past three decades has come to embody in many ways the ongoing struggle for values dear to us for freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of expression,” said the prime minister.
“I know we all want to send our very best wishes to him.”
Welsh, a creative writing professor at the University of Glasgow, rose to read a short passage from Sir Salman’s novel Midnight’s Children, a gesture to which festival guests have been invited this year.
Ms Sturgeon, who regularly talks about her love of reading, then began a discussion of the Glasgow-based author’s written works after hailing her as one of Scotland’s best contemporary writers.
She asked Welsh, who has written nine novels, about her Plague Times trilogy, published between 2014 and 2017.
The dystopian series documents the collapse of Britain, along with the rest of the world, thanks to a flu-like pandemic called “the Sweats,” which begins with a hard, cracking cough.
The author told the audience that her inspiration was from her own childhood in the 1970s, with her fear of nuclear Armageddon, and a fascination with the Black Death, inspired by her studies in medieval history.
While the coronavirus hit just a few years after the books were published, Ms Sturgeon described the trilogy as “incredibly prescient”, before joking with Welsh, asking, “Did you know something the rest of us didn’t?”
The pair then discussed The Second Cut, which revolves around the life of Rilke, the gay auction antihero who stars in The Cutting Room.
Written two decades after The Cutting Room, Ms Sturgeon and Welsh spoke about how much has changed for the LGBTQ+ community since 2002.
The Cutting Room was written during the “Keep the Clause” campaign, a privately funded political campaign organized in 2000 with the aim of opposing the repeal of legislation known as Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 in the UK , which banned local authorities from “deliberately promoting homosexuality”.
Welsh said she regularly saw defamation against the LGBTQ+ community, but given the societal shift, The Second Cut is kicking off with gay marriage, a beginning she said was hard to imagine 20 years ago.
“I wanted to start this new book with a moment of joy, which recognizes this change, with an equal marriage, between two men, who have been together for 20 or 30 years and who have now decided to tie the knot,” she said. . .
Mrs. Sturgeon asked if she felt progress was moving forward or backward, to which she replied: “I think we should keep going. We have to keep fighting.
“For those of us who have the luxury of being open, we should.
“I think being visible is hugely important if you can… the world has changed a lot.
“People couldn’t be like we are, and that feels like a huge privilege and right.
“I’m lucky to live in this time, but I don’t feel completely relaxed.”
Mrs. Sturgeon asked if there would be a third Rilke book, to which Welsh replied “yes”, before adding: “And that will be in less than 20 years.”
To close the discussion, the Prime Minister asked the author for some advice for emerging writers.
Welsh replied: “Every writer, no matter what stage they are in, has a little voice that says ‘you know this isn’t right, you know this is bullshit’, and you have to learn how to turn to that voice and say, ‘well, that may be so, but I’m just going to carry on’.”
Ms. Sturgeon will return to the stage later this month to interview Brian Cox.
The book festival runs until Monday 29 August.
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