Sarah Krasnostein is a writer. She is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America, and holds a doctorate in criminal law. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner which won the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Australian Book Industry Award for General Non-Fiction, the Dobbie Literary Award, jointly won the Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, was nominated for the Walkley Book Award and shortlisted for the National Biography Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Wellcome Book Prize (UK). Her work has appeared in a variety of publications and academic journals in Australia, the UK and America.
Today, Sarah Krasnostein is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about her new book, The Believer: Encounters with Love, Death & Faith. Read on …
Sarah Krasnostein (Photo by Gina Milicia).
Please tell us about your book, The Believer.
SK: The Believer is a non-fiction book that I researched over four years. It is six stories braided together about people with very different ways of mentally processing the difficult parts of being alive – death, injustice, illness, loneliness, uncertainty. While some of those people might be seen as unusual in their outlooks, the book aims to show that we are united in the emotions which drive us towards the beliefs which separate us.
What appeals to you as a writer about the concept of belief?
SK: As we’ve seen over the last year, intellect alone doesn’t move the world. When we look at our wildly diverging beliefs – our certainties in the absence of knowledge – we’re looking into a fundamental aspect of the human experience: how we make meaning from the world as it is with all its messiness and imperfection. I find that fascinating.
Was there anything in particular that made you want to write this book?
SK: I stumbled across a religious choir in a train station and the sound of those people singing took my breath away – I needed to find out more about them. After spending some time with the families in that choir, their story led me on to the next story in the book, and so on. In the book I write that while meetings can be accidental, our curiosity is not – there was something in me looking to understand what, at first, seemed impenetrable. I was looking for some connection across distance.
How much were your own initial ideas about belief challenged while writing this book?
SK: I found that things which appeared bizarre at first were often more familiar to me on a personal level than I had expected.
Why do you think people cling to their beliefs, despite the existence of disproving evidence in some cases?
SK: None of us likes discomfort. We don’t tolerate it well physically or cognitively or emotionally. We will go to great lengths to avoid it – even if it means looking the other way. I’m less interested in magical thinking in itself, and more interested in the fact that it’s something we all do at times, if we’re honest with ourselves. But the book taught me that there’s enormous strength in the shared vulnerability that comes when we let our guard down about the difficult parts of the human experience.
You spent four years travelling around Australia and the US, interviewing people for this book. Can you tell us about one of your more memorable interview experiences?
SK: Well, I never pictured myself sitting in the living room of a haunted house watching a ghostbuster at work – but there you are.
What do you hope readers will discover in The Believer?
SK: That we are more similar in our fears and our hopes. That we are all grieving something, pushing against some reality, wanting something to be other than it is. And that this shared emotion can be the source of great unity and comfort. Or it could be the energy that tears us apart personally and collectively.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
SK: I’m following three different Aussie stories at the moment, and one in the States. Note to any aspiring writers reading this: there are more stories than there are people out there! And fact is still stranger than fiction.
Thanks Sarah!
—The Believer: Encounters with Love, Death & Faith by Sarah Krasnostein (Text Publishing) is out now.
The Believer
Encounters with Love, Death & Faith
This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge.
From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and the world as we’d like it to be. How they can stunt us – or save us. Some of the people you will meet believe in things most people don’t...
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