Miles Franklin Award-winning author Sofie Laguna takes a trip into the underworld

Although he now hesitates to use this description, it is clear that he has a deep attachment to Martha. “It has a tangible presence outside of me, which is very strange,” he says. “I can picture him now in this conversation as he describes his old self. I can feel him again, but [now the book is finished]My natural tendency is to walk away. I don’t want him to hear this; “I feel guilty saying this.”

Martha was originally designed to serve one purpose: Laguna was writing about a different character, a man, and he needed a woman to meet him.

She discovered him while watching her son at basketball practice in a high school gym. He began writing a monologue from the female character’s point of view.

“The voice came out with incredible energy, as if it was keeping up with the balls being hit. And it told the story of childhood, education, knowledge, academia and betrayal from the perspective of an adult voice. During the skills and drills, it was angry, funny and very clever. I was writing as fast as I could,” he says.

“And then the whistle blew, the balls were released, the pen was released. I knew something was happening. I knew it was a rare writing experience, but it was made all the more intense by the nature of my environment.”

Once home, he realized that his original character, which had been lifted and demoted many times over the past 20 years, had to move on again, this time for Martha.

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“This came from a place in me where I had a lot to say, and I hadn’t worked with this part before. I couldn’t give it up. And when you start a new job, you have to decide at what point in their life do I start? What story do I need to tell about their life as we know it?”

She describes herself as a young adult writer, but says this is inaccurate. He wrote with voices that were young but had never really explored the arrival of that critical transition period. “I didn’t really think I was interested in it, and thanks to Martha I discovered there was so much to say, think, feel and express.”

Underworld She says it was harder to write than her previous books, perhaps because Martha’s world wasn’t so different from her own school days; Boarding school was lonely until he found a tight group of friends, especially those who studied Latin. “It was a very established family, and my family was an unconventional family, and so I was an outsider who eventually found his way, and when I did, it was a home.”

His first main characters came from harsher circumstances, but in these novels he found himself able to continue the story within three months; with UnderworldDoubts and weaknesses troubled him. He says that for the first time, he could not look at what he wrote from a bird’s eye view and thus could not master the narrative.

As he wrote, the importance Latin had given him at school resurfaced in his own unconscious. Like Martha, he did not realize how important his special relationship with her was.

A lot of research was done during the writing, which he loved, and plenty of Latin poetry was added to the novel… “I have always been against Latin quotes.”

Later, after a traumatic encounter with a visiting lecturer, Martha turns her attention to the works of Latin poet Sulpicia; Six of this man’s extant poems are attributed to the male poet Albius Tibullus.

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“That’s the wonderful thing about research. What a beautiful and wonderful thing it is to discover that there was a beautiful young woman named Sulpicia who was, and still is, completely dismissed. And students at various universities are still writing to defend her because I read their dissertations. It served my story perfectly.”

He asks rhetorically how much things have changed.

When I mention Sulpicia she corrects my pronunciation. The classics teacher at school was strict about this; “we were all very careful about it” and he recently attended a refresher course so he could record the audiobook. “This is the first time I’ve done it.” All of Laguna’s lives – school, acting, writing – come together in one place.

Underworld (Penguin) was released on October 28.