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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

Akhil Sharma

I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
AKHIL SHARMA

Important Mean Narrative Need Sense Thing Writing
My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
AKHIL SHARMA

Accomplish Approach Aware Birthday Come Constant Gone Little Mange
Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
AKHIL SHARMA

Book Exposition Expression Feel Reader Suggest Tender Trust
If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.
AKHIL SHARMA

Abortion Breaking Community News Newspaper Obvious People Read
It’s easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don’t want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.
AKHIL SHARMA

Act Be Kind Fear Grow Up Out Want
I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.
AKHIL SHARMA

Experience Good Less People Plain Realized Sentence Stretch Thing
Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer,
AKHIL SHARMA

Doing Good Important Influence People Realize Thing Writer Writing
Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn’t. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.
AKHIL SHARMA

Authority Book Fact Fiction Novel Real Something True World Writing
Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider’s look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.
AKHIL SHARMA

Account Challenge Dramatic Look Medical Person Profession Psychological
Money is part of how we move through the world, what stores and restaurants we go into, whether we take a train to the airport or a taxi. Describing characters living in the real world requires describing them engaging with money.
AKHIL SHARMA

Character Info Money Moving Part Real Restaurant World
It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
AKHIL SHARMA

Able Child Children Create Enough First Information Legible Narrator
There are also so many emotional aspects to money – feelings of inadequacy, feelings of security. I am not sure if there needs to be more about money in fiction, but the absence of this aspect can make a story feel somehow frictionless and unreal.
AKHIL SHARMA

Aspect Emotional Feeling Fiction How Inadequacy Money Security Unreal
My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
AKHIL SHARMA

Deeply Hindus Parent Pious
The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
AKHIL SHARMA

Baby Family Life Memories Missing Past
To me exposition always contains tenderness.
AKHIL SHARMA

Assuming Contain Emotional Exposition Tenderness Way
The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they’ll forget.
AKHIL SHARMA

Away Cry Everything Forget Loose Lost Memory Slide Tear

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

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For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

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