KHADISHA ASSEMKULOVA: What was your inspiration for writing "If there is paradise"? Was there something that pushed you to work on this book?

MARIA RYBAKOVA: Yes, there were two things. The first one was when I was in a store, an antiques shop, quite by accident I found a book by the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai - “Embers”. I really liked the book, and so I wanted to know more about this writer. Then, I received a writing scholarship to the Central European University in Budapest for four months. I really liked Budapest itself, the university was wonderful and at the same time I was reading this writer who had such a ... such a very strange fate. Moreover, while I was there, Hungary celebrated the 60 year anniversary of the  ‘56 uprising. I didn't know anything about this part of history before, and taken together, all of this made a great impression on me.

KA: What about Grosschmidt, who is often mentioned in the book, is this some real historical figure or a prototype of this Hungarian writer?

MR: It is the writer. [Grosschmidt] is his other name. He had two names. One was Hungarian: Sándor Márai, and the other was German, since he spoke two languages. He used the Hungarian name when he wrote his books. I didn't want to deliberately insert his name into the book, but this character is definitely inspired by him, so I took the German version of his name.

KA: Is the main character also a prototype of someone from real life?

MR (laughs): That is a secret, I can't tell you that.

KA: The reason I ask is because the thoughts of the main character, her tendency to think about everything, as well as her character traits are so well conveyed that I thought there must be someone real behind the fiction. 

MR: Thank you, for an author, this is a great compliment! 

KA: The book delves into several themes: how the system and the state can affect the formation of someone’s personality; how guilt functions in psychological terms... Which of these themes was the most important for you? What was your initial starting point when you started writing the book? And what ideas appeared, so to speak, in the course of writing?

MR: I think the main theme for me is the impossibility of happiness, this impossibility stemming from the fact that any person will definitely, at some point, do something shameful, something that makes them feel guilty. And that feeling of guilt is something that will never let go completely. Thus you cannot hope that sooner or later you will be happy, you can only learn to live with your own demons.

KA: Hmm, but I thought that at the end of the book the heroine seemed to forgive herself.

MR: Yes, one could say that in the book this is true. But she went through such adventures, made such strange connections. For us, who perhaps do not want to travel so much, or get involved in such bizarre stories, for us in our ordinary life, this is probably the main idea --  to learn to live as we are. 

KA: Speaking of the ending itself - did you plan in advance what it would be or did you come up with it while writing?

MR: I discovered it along the way, yes. When I started writing the book, I didn't know what the ending would be, to be honest. But from the beginning, because there is one ... one specific chapter in brackets, I thought to end the book with the main character leaving for India. Because for me it was important that the heroine is trying to catch up with the hero, despite the fact that all circumstances are completely against this.  The ending I had in mind was initially much more pessimistic. But at the very last moment, it turned out happier than expected. Mostly because I was lucky again and received some money to go to India. I went to India for two weeks, and it was such an interesting trip that my imagination immediately went to work...other things began to happen in the book, and as a result, I had my ending. 

KA: What is the importance of such an ending for the protagonist? Because, honestly, I was surprised. As a reader, I thought that everything would go according to the usual script… You know, they say that everyone we meet up to a certain point in our lives is a testament to our neuroses, and then a good and easy relationship comes along, and this becomes the main relationship of our life. So the last page surprised me a lot. "How come she's not with him?!" What did this ending mean for the main character, an ending where she is still choosing a difficult, complicated relationship with no future?

MR: You know, it is very hard for me to answer this question, because when you write a book it is almost impossible to interpret it. You write on some intuition and it is difficult to explain why something is the way it is. I think the ending is the way it is because in the depths of her soul, a person remains herself, no matter what happens, and some deep passions control us until the very end. The heroine does not refuse them, and so her story is the way it is. Perhaps now taken to another level, but still, it will be this way.

KA: I was also surprised that throughout the book the main character deals with her feelings of guilt about the past, but in the end does something which she will also be ashamed of, in this case, commits adultery. Going back to what you said earlier, is this a confirmation that the feeling of guilt cannot really be extinguished or ...?

MR: In some way yes, but perhaps not in a sense that she confirms this reality, but keeps creating situations where she has to live with it (this feeling of being guilty). I tend to believe in original sin, I believe that the feeling of guilt is a very human feeling that in many ways makes us ourselves. The feeling that we are to blame for something, because, really, we aren’t we all to blame for something, almost all of us? A lot in modern culture is aimed at removing this feeling from us, because it torments us inside very much - we want to feel like good people, we want to feel like happy people. But, in fact, what makes us human is a sense of responsibility, a sense of our guilt. And I wanted to write a book where this will be clear, in all its, how to say, painfulness. That this kind of guilt should not let a person go.

KA: There is an opinion that when a writer writes something, it’s a kind of psychological release for them. Is this book something like that for you?

MR: Yes, you know, on the one hand, every book torments you when you are writing it. The process is very difficult, but it helps in some way. Especially this book. It always seemed to me that there is a whole world, some unspoken layer in each of us. And for me, this is what this book was, in some way. For example, when I wrote it, that is, before I wrote it, I was in Hungary, and I thought about what it means to be Russian. Because you grow up in Russia, and everyone tells you all the time what a great country we have, and then you come to Hungary and understand that in reality everything is not so, and people around you see you as a person who belongs to the nation that occupied them for forty years.

So what does that mean? How can one think about it? How does one live with it? These are the questions that I think about. And if I were a philosopher or a journalist, I would probably write about it differently and maybe more directly. But as a writer, you walk along completely different, indirect paths in order to think and talk about all of it.

KA: Are there any plans to continue this story? Especially since the ending is very much open?

MR: You know, I thought about it. It may not be a continuation of this book, per se, but one of my earlier books, "Draft of a Man", was also about childhood in late socialism. And if “Draft of a Man” is about people, “If There is Paradise” is about angels, so it may be possible to write a third book, which would be about the underworld, metaphorically speaking, about something completely hellish. And then you could consider all three as a kind of trilogy. I have ideas, but I haven't written it.

KA: So if there was a third book, all of them would consider the theme of guilt, or would the themes differ?

MR: Let's just say the themes of guilt and wrongdoing. Because in the first book, the heroine feels like a victim of the Soviet establishment, especially the literary establishment. That book I based partially on the life of Nika Turbina, a Soviet prodigy. Thus, the first book was more from the position of a victim, and the second, as it were ... what would be the opposite of the victim ... the criminal, the perpetrator, right? A person who feels guilty, not downtrodden. And the third ... I’d need to think more on it.

KA: Maybe something in the middle?

MR: Something in between those two states, certainly, or perhaps about a person who is both.

KA: To continue our conversation about the ending, you said that you didn't know exactly what it would turn out to be like. Have you ever had a moment while writing when it felt like it was not you who decided what would happen next, but the characters themselves would act in some way, or make choices that surprised even you?

MR: The ending, yes. It somehow happened on its own, as if the characters themselves decided that they would live in old Delhi and would keep meeting in this room. That really felt as if I didn’t write it, but rather, it came from elsewhere. Before that I was very much in control, I would say.

KA: You influence the characters, though, even if they live their own lives. Was there something in your life that led to this kind of peculiar happy ending?

MR (laughs): If you consider my life, it was probably that I left a job that I didn’t like. This made me more optimistic than I usually am. Made me believe in happy endings.

KA: So what do you think, ultimately: is it a happy ending or not? On the one hand, the heroine achieved what she wanted, on the other, she gets there by somewhat immoral means.

MR: I think this ending is as happy as it can be in this life, let's put it this way. I think, if you adjust for the reality of human existence, it is a happy ending. You know, when you adjust for the complexity of a person and the complexity of life.

KA: How was the book received by readers? Was the reaction to this book different from the reaction to your previous novels? Did it meet your expectations?

MR: You know, I try to never read any criticism, because then you start to worry and there really is no need for that. But in my opinion, the readers received the book well. Although I wondered if there would be a kind of “Oh, no, adultery!” reaction. But no, it seemed like they liked everything, and I’m happy about that, of course.

KA: In one of your writing seminars, you said that every author has one big theme that comes through over and over again in everything he or she writes. What is your theme, what do you think is something that is present in all of your work?

MR: I think it’s the pursuit of the unattainable. My protagonist is always yearning for something that is impossible.

KA: In the book, I was surprised that despite the fact that the main plot carries on through love, travel, etc, there are also a lot of the main character’s thoughts, her internal monologues about history, serial killers, etc. How did you assemble such a collection of miscellaneous information, and why?

MR: Well, I believe that we all have very rich inner worlds, and if you describe a person, there will always be a lot in their head. A lot of stuff is of course lifted from TV, newspapers, from conversations with friends. I lived in the United States for a very long time and read all the "True Crime" books about all sorts of criminals, at the time this was incredibly interesting to me. And I think that these books interested me, because I was unhappy with my life and had a lot of repressed aggression, but instead of taking it out on people, I worked through it by reading about the people who killed others, ate them, and so on.

I think that my protagonist is also quite dissatisfied with herself and her life, and she, as it were, also deals with it by reading and thinking about violence. But another aspect of this that always amazed, or may be amazed is not the right word, but definitely interested me, were the stories of women criminals who killed a lot of people simply because they were very much in love with some serial killer or psychopath. I always thought that I just got lucky. I always fell in love quite intensely, and I suppose I was just fortunate that I never fell in love with someone who would kill someone, because who knows how I would have behaved in these women’s shoes?

This is one of the things that interests me, one that I think about a lot: how would you behave if you were someone else, or in someone else’s position? Because it seems to me that we could very easily cross the line: become a criminal, become a soldier, become anyone. We always think of ourselves as fundamentally good, but this is usually due to the fact that circumstances worked out well for us. But if we met someone evil, if we grew up in a different kind of family, may be we would also grow up murderers? And on top of this, I was interested in the connection between love, which should be a wonderful feeling, and something completely ugly that can happen as a result of this love, something you do in order to be loved.

After all, what is a person capable of doing in order to be loved? They say even people who join extremist, fascist and other such organizations do so because they want to be loved. It's a dangerous feeling, this thirst for love, this need.

KA: Right now the theme of self-love is very much touted and promoted: for instance, the idea that if a person loves himself, he is self-sufficient, he is doing well, there will be no desire to get into something dangerous or immoral for the sake of someone else's love. What's your take on the concept of self-love?

MR: A person, it seems to me, cannot love herself, because she knows herself too well. A person can love another person because she can be deceived about them. You cannot be deceived about yourself, not really, you know too well what is wrong with you. You can accept yourself somehow, but not love. In general, love is something that is by definition aimed at another person. You love something that is not you. To love yourself ... well, it can only be imaginary. When you love food, you want to eat it, when you love a person, you want to kiss him, but you can't eat yourself, kiss yourself, right? Therefore, I believe that self-love is an illusion.

KA: In light of today's conventional wisdom like the benefit of self-development and self-love, it was interesting to read your book.

MR: It might be worth striving to maintain your own dignity, but it seems to me better to just turn your brain on and try to understand what is that that someone may be trying to lure you into. But, unfortunately, it is very difficult for us to turn on our brains when emotions are involved.

KA: Last but not least, since this interview is for Angime, and readers may be budding writers themselves, what advice would you give to readers who love to write? Any tips that once helped you grow as a writer, or principles that guide you consistently?

MR: It helps me a lot that I have friends who like what I write, and every time I write, they say “Well done, keep writing!”. This is very inspiring. And it is enough to have one or two such friends. You should not expect that many people will love you, because this is not at all what you need. It is also very important to go your own way, not to look at who wrote what, who is being read. Something like this will come about by itself. If you write and you like it, and you keep writing, then everything will work out!

Maria Rybakova’s novel is currently available in Russian