Ania Bas on Odd Hours, migration and displacement

A supermarket shift worker in the nowhere land of Zone 3 London, she spends hours inside her own head, longing for a type of love that won’t come easy, if it even exists in the first place. Golab is also fictional; the creation of Ania Bas, and protagonist of her debut novel, Odd Hours. Described as 'compelling, surprising, funny' by Kate Sawyer, and more succinctly, ‘f***ing brilliant’ by Daisy May Cooper,Odd Hours was published by Welbeck Publishing Group in June of this year.

An artist, writer and organiser, Bas has worked across text, performance, publishing and social engagement. The impressive list of organisations she has worked with since arriving in the UK from Poland 15 years ago include Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, Yorkshire Artspace and Art on the Underground.

Just after Odd Hours release we welcomed Bas to the Southbank Centre for a special discussion on new writing as part of our series of events celebrating Refugee Week. Bas joined fellow authors Christy Lefteri and Helen Benedict in our Purcell Room to discuss the themes of displacement and migration in their writing.

Ahead of that event we took the opportunity to catch up with Bas to discuss her experiences as a migrant to the UK, the joys of a walking book group, and writing characters that it’s hard to love.

We’re speaking just ahead of the publication of your debut novel Odd Hours, how’re you feeling about it? How does it feel to be on the cusp of sending something you’ve made out into the wider world?

For me, it’s an emotionally peculiar experience – on the one hand I get on with everyday life as usual, as if nothing is happening, and then I’m reminded by a Tweet, an Instagram post or a request for an interview, that the book is about to come out and that something I have worked on for quite some time is real and about to be very public. I’m looking forward to it – I’m really excited for Gosia Golab to be out in the world. She is not a fast-to-love character so I’m cheering her on, in the hope that readers will get under her prickly nature and she’ll make new friends.

Where did the inspiration for Odd Hours come from?

There isn’t one source of inspiration but a number of interwoven aspects. I was interested in telling the story of someone whose family is from somewhere else and who has very tenuous links to their roots, no access to their parent’s language or connections to family elsewhere. I wanted to write about love – a force that I believe makes our lives on earth matter – but I wanted to explore the whole breadth of what love is rather than narrow it down to the romantic sort that we are so often led to believe is the most important kind. And Gosia Golab is obsessed with that particular notion. She is lonely, she is not finding relationships easy, and thinks that all she needs is a man.

I also wanted to write a book about life on the peripheries of a town, where normal, everyday stuff happens, where people work in unglamorous jobs, eat porridge, and hang out in the supermarkets. That part was very much inspired by living in London’s zone three and being part of a very diverse community.

When writing the book did you have an audience in mind, or, as your first novel, were you writing for yourself?

I don’t know if this is just a first novel thing for me, because I’m currently writing my second book and, as with Odd Hours, I’m writing first and foremost for myself. I’m digging out a story that sits in my head and my innards, and that I want to tell. It took me a long time to get to the point where I started seeing writing as part of my art practice and a ‘thing to do’, a little bit like cooking dinner or putting a wash on – not only an activity that fills my day but an activity that I now consider essential to my day, something that makes me feel that it was day well-lived.

Has there been a review for the book that surprised you at all? Perhaps a comparison to another work or writer which you’d not considered?

Quite a few readers compared the book to Fleabag, to Suyaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, to Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda and to Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels, and I’m thrilled with all these comparisons because all the characters in these works are, like Gosia, complex and not immediately loveable and cosy. I didn’t want to contribute an easy-to-fall-in-love-with female character, I was keen on creating an edgy protagonist that does embarrassing things, has dark thoughts and struggles with relationships.

You’re both an artist and writer, which do you think of yourself as being first?

I’ve been practising as an artist for over 15 years so that identity feels very well attached now, although it was hard work to get here. Being a writer feels very new and I’m working on owning the description. I’m getting there.

Beyond your work as a writer, one thing you’re involved in is The Walking Reading Group; can you tell us a bit more about this fascinating project?

The Walking Reading Group is a project that facilitates a knowledge exchange between a group of people who meet for a walk to discuss a set of texts. We walk together, but in pairs, and swap these pairs frequently. Over a couple of hours everyone has around four conversations with four different people. It is a version of a reading group where people are more active and where exchanges are one-to-one.

I run the project with a friend and writer, Lydia Ashman. It started in 2013, but since 2017 we have been working with the theme of ‘care’ as our long-term focus. In fact it was through our focus on the theme of ‘care’ during a residency at Art House, Jersey, that I was encouraged to concentrate on my writing and The Walking Reading Group continues to feed this practice. It’s a way for me to read and discuss texts that I find challenging, and I find exchanges with people fascinating. I learn so much from listening to others and I like thinking (literally) on my feet, while walking through changing landscapes and cityscapes.

You’re joining us in Refugee Week as part of a talk about displacement and migration; what do those two words mean to you?

I’m a migrant. I chose to leave my country and try my luck elsewhere – a very privileged way to migrate fuelled by curiosity, excitement and borders opening up. I came over with the first wave of Eastern Europeans only months after Poland joined the EU. 

I’m also from a family of migrants. My grandparents were relocated after the Second World War to the lands that were originally German, from the lands that then became part of the Soviet Union and, after 1989, Lithuania and Ukraine. This experience of displacement and migration is part of my family history and I carry it with me. To me, it’s part of who I am.

That’s different for Gosia, she doesn’t have strong connections and doesn’t know her family’s stories, she doesn’t speak the language of her dad. That void eventually becomes uncomfortable and she makes an attempt to find out where she comes from and how migration shaped her.

You’ve been in the UK now for 15 years; has your experience as a Polish person here changed at all during that time?

There have been a number of shifts during that time. Eastern Europeans have typically been seen as a cheap labour force – undercutting the going hourly rates – so some people were surprised to find out that I worked in the arts. Now it seems it is more widespread to see Eastern Europeans in all sorts of occupations.

There has also been a shift in how I’m perceived, due to my accent not being obviously Polish or Eastern European. People usually think I’m from France and the reaction to a perceived French person is very different to one from Poland. It seems to me that some migrants are more desirable than others. This is most starkly evident right now with the government sending Afghan and Syrian refugees to Rwanda but paying UK citizens to house those from Ukraine.

And lastly, if you could give one piece of advice to anyone arriving newly to the UK in 2022, what would it be?

Please celebrate who you are. Don’t feel like you need to hide your culture, adapt your name, or bend in other ways to fit – it will only come back to bite you.

Ania Bas’ Odd Hours is published by Welbeck Publishing Group, and is available on pre-order now.

Order Odd Hours

You can find out more about The Walking Reading Group, including details of upcoming walks through their website.

The Walking Reading Group

Interview by Glen Wilson