Pratchett interview on Nation

14 September 2008 (22:11) Alzheimer's Nation Other Terry Pratchett Books Interviews News Terry Pratchett News Archives

Publishers Weekly interviewed Terry Pratchett recently (slight spoilers at the link) about Nation, calling it “more somber,” to which Pratchett responds, “It’s important for the hero to have tragic relief, the opposite of light relief. Let’s not forget that at the very beginning, the young hero has to bury everyone he’s known in his life and spends quite a lot of the book teetering on the edge of insanity. The book deals with issues that can’t be handled lightly.”

The interview takes a bit of a detour, of course, into Alzheimer’s.  Pratchett points out that “Alzheimer’s made a mistake, because it hit me with a variant that leaves me still more than capable of thinking and writing and speaking, and a lot of my time now is taken up with publicity for Alzheimer’s funding.”

He also talks a bit about kid’s reading, saying, “when I was a kid I read books well ahead of what my parents thought I read. It’s a wise child that doesn’t always let their parents know what they’re reading. I picked up quite an extensive vocabulary from reading although I must confess that for years I thought the word ‘ogre’ was pronounced ‘ogrey.’ I’d never actually heard it spoken, but I’d read it hundreds of times.”

Most intriguing of all, to those who haven’t yet read Nation Pratchett’s answer to whether or not Nation is “magical”: “That depends.”

Nation came out Sept. 11 in the U.K. and Sept. 30 in the U.S. (it is now available for preorder).