A brand new novel by Chris Bohjalian explores previous Hollywood stars on safari.
NY Publish photograph composite
In August 2019, writer Chris Bohjalian was at a matinee film in NYC when the inspiration for what would turn into his subsequent novel, “The Lioness” (Doubleday), out now, struck.
“I emerged from the theater into this cobalt blue sky, steaming warmth. Ten minutes earlier I had been watching this film. And I assumed, ‘My God, I like Hollywood! Why have I by no means written a Hollywood novel?” he says.
“I knew my Hollywood novel can be set in some unspecified time in the future in my childhood. So I went again to a interval of nice social upheaval. And I didn’t need the locale to be simply Hollywood. I assumed, ‘What's an unique location in 1964 the place a bunch of Hollywood actors and their entourage might get into all kinds of bother?’”
Because it seems, Tanzania. A-list actress Katie Barstow and her new husband David have traveled there for a high-end safari, accompanied by just a few associates and fellow actors. The journey guarantees to be an expensive getaway, full of wildlife and beautiful surroundings, till the unthinkable occurs — a band of Russian mercenaries takes them hostage after killing their safari guides. (“Russians have been the unhealthy guys in my books for a very long time,” he notes.)
Whereas the Vermont-based writer is prolific, no two books are the identical — they may vary from a flight attendant waking up subsequent to a lifeless physique in a Dubai resort room (“The Flight Attendant,” the premise for the favored HBOMax collection) to a Puritan lady accused of witchcraft in 1600s Massachusetts (“Hour of the Witch”) to a younger lady serving to refugees from the 1915 Armenian genocide (“The Sandcastle Women.”)
“My books are powered by dread. I would like my readers strolling a tightrope with one facet being heartbreak, the opposite facet being hope,” says Bohjalian, who prefers to edit manuscript drafts with a fountain pen. “I’m not afraid to kill my major characters — I do it lots. My purpose is rarely to jot down the identical guide twice. However all my books share those self same qualities. You don’t know in case you’re going to finish on heartbreak or hope.”
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