Parul Kapur is an accomplished novelist, journalist, and literary critic. Born in an oil town in India, she spent her early childhood between Bombay, Calcutta, and New Delhi. At seven, she emigrated to the United States with her family.
Her first novel, Inside the Mirror, took the literary world by storm, racking up numerous awards, including Kapur being named Georgia Author of the Year.
Kapur will be Georgia Writers Museum’s Meet the Author presenter of Inside the Mirror on March 3, and GWM was able to get a few minutes with her to learn more about her work and writing process.
GWM: What is it about the historical fiction genre that most attracts you as an author?
Kapur: When I write about a different time, I’m also writing about a different place, and I love recreating a world I don’t quite know piece by piece. There’s mystery and longing around the lost past.
My interest is in recent history, especially the mid-20th century, a time that feels familiar yet surprisingly strange because of the forgotten technologies, the vanished manners, and ways of thinking.
GWM: What in your background most encouraged you to become an author?
Kapur: Losing my home as a child.
My short stories and my novels — I have several others partially completed — are all set in India. There’s no way I could explain to anyone the depth of the loss I felt when we immigrated. I didn’t even understand it myself; it all came out in the writing.
GWM: Your initial professional writing career was as a United Nations press officer and magazine reporter. How does writing a book compare to reporting in terms of emotional satisfaction?
Kapur: They are very different experiences, each exciting in its own way, although working at a magazine or at the United Nations could never be a reflection of me as a writer, or a composite of my family history, my obsessions and wishes, as my novel is.
My story has nothing in it about my actual life as an immigrant. Yet, it’s a true impression of me as the young woman I was when I began writing the book in my 20s — passionate, determined, blind to my limitations.
GWM: What was the origin of the idea of writing about twins following careers different than their dreams?
Kapur: My fictional twin sisters follow the educational paths their father has chosen for them—medicine for Jaya and teaching for Kamlesh. This was exactly what my grandfather decided for my mother and her sister in the ’50s, and he was considered a progressive man for wanting his daughters to become professionals. But the twins in the novel have big dreams of their own and challenge their father in a way that never happened in real life.
GWM: Can you give us a sneak preview of your next book?
Kapur: It’s about a glamorous but troubled young couple in 1960s India who feel the walls closing in on them. A single chance of survival presents itself — leaving home for good.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. on March 3 for GWM’s Meet the Author with Parul Kapur, with her presentation set to begin at 7 p.m. Kapur will hold a book signing after her presentation, and this special event will also feature a themed gourmet dinner by Chef Brent.
Tickets are $45 each or $40 each for two or more, available online at georgiawritersmuseum. org, or call Georgia Writers Museum (109 S. Jefferson Ave., Eatonton) at 706-991-5119 to register and pre-order a copy of Inside the Mirror, by Parul Kapur.
— Contributed