Gabriel Krauze's extra-curricular activities were a little different from the average English literature student.
While completing his degree at London's Queen Mary College, he was involved in London gang life and living on a notorious estate in South Kilburn.
His debut autobiographical novel Who They Was, which describes this life, was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize.
Gabriel Krauze Photo: supplied
Who They Was is a violent, visceral book with no redemptive arc, Krauze says.
“In literature, people are obsessed with these narratives that are redemptive, or with narratives that give them hope and joy, and this really is becoming a tired regurgitation of a kind of unreality that people for some reason, readers, a lot of readers, want to believe in a version of the world which simply doesn't exist.
“And it's a false kind of idealism as well, because it means that we don't engage with challenging ideas.”
On the nihilism which draws young men to gang life.
“If you read the poetry of Homer, if you read the Iliad by Homer, there's this amazing passage, when Achilles is about to go off to battle to fight the Trojans, and his mother says to him, 'listen, if you go off to battle, you're going to die in battle, but your name will live forever.
“But if you stay at home, you will live till you're 125 years old, and you'll have grandchildren and great grandchildren. But when you die, no one will remember your name'.
“And in the blink of an eye, he says, 'I want to go to battle, I want to die. And I want my name to live forever'.”
On why society turns away from the psychological reasons for crime.
“Young men exist within this nihilistic psychological mindset, it's a psychological environment as opposed to a physical environment, because it's not as simplistic as saying ‘oh, it's just to do with poverty and deprivation'. It's also to do with the fact that some people are affected by their circumstances. And by the way in which they view the world differently, and they disconnect from other people who don't look at them the same way or, look at the world in the same way as them.
“And we don't really investigate in society the psychological environment, or the philosophical makeup of these young men.”
“We just talk about it in simplistic terms of poverty and crime.”
On gang life as a kind of hyper-capitalism.
“People often talk about criminality within the context of liberal thinking. And we think about how to solve this problem without realising that when it comes to selling drugs, and being in a gang, and basically being a gangster, having the aspiration to be a gangster it is a form of like really ruthless capitalism, where we realise the way in which you can have a better quality of life, the way in which you can be more socially mobile is just basically to get money.”
On becoming sucked into gang life as a teenager.
“I was 13 years old, when I first saw somebody get stabbed right in front of me, like literally a metre from me.
“And then the next time I saw somebody get stabbed up was two weeks later, and it basically degrades your threshold for violence, it degrades your threshold for being shocked by things.
“And before you know it, you're very inured to that, you're very numb to that stuff. And where it shocks other people. It doesn't shock you.
“Like me personally, I don't find my book shocking at all, I have to be reminded by the others that is quite a shocking work because of the world it opens a window on to.”
On his diamond grill.
“When I first moved to South Kilburn, when I was 17 years old, I saw everyone on the block who was making money, getting money selling drugs and everything, had these diamond grillz.
“And this is before the days of UK rappers, and rappers in other countries, wearing diamond grillz, it was like a really unique thing to see. It was very niche. And there was only one place in London as well that you could get diamond grillz, there was only one jeweller who was making this, it was a status symbol.
“It's also something that's interesting because it exists in this very dark environment, this environment of brutalist concrete towers, it's very ugly, it's grim. And then you suddenly you have these diamonds flashing in faces and there's something beautiful about it as well.”
Gabriel Krauze Photo: supplied
On a Nietzschean morality.
“There's a quote in the Genealogy of Morality, when Nietzsche says, it is the meaning of all culture to breed a tame and civilised animal out of the beast of prey man.
“And these young men, and the young men involved in crime, are the beasts of prey who haven't had that instinct bred out of them by culture, by civilisation, by society, they've retained some of that animalistic element within them.
“So, discussing matters of remorse, that's like part of a different moral code. And again, the book is about how morality is relative to the level of danger in which you live, if you live in a different context, that's much more dangerous, your moral code is completely different, remorse doesn't come into play.
“Because if you are burdened by remorse, every time you did something bad, you'd be incapable of living within that world.”
On the redemptive power of art.
“The greatest thing, the most powerful thing, that can take you away from the brink is art, art is the closest thing to God, is the closest way in which we get to God or the idea of what God could be, or what God is whether you're religious or not.
"And art can save somebody, because it engages their imagination, and it takes them somewhere else.”
On the book and his writing.
“I don't believe that I'm a particularly good writer, to be quite frank with you, I don't think the book is particularly good, but it's a personal artistic agony, like I could get the Nobel Prize for literature for this book tomorrow and I would just laugh.
“I would just say, you don't really understand what great literature is, because I don't have a great work of literature. It's personal, a personal artistic agony.”
On fake authenticity
“There was this big push in the British literary scene a few years ago, I remember there was this moment when all the publishers were saying, we want to hear more authentic voices... but they don't really mean authentic across the board, they want versions of authenticity that tick boxes for them, that tick moralistic boxes for them, that also tick boxes in terms of like all these buzzwords and everything you know?
“You can see like 100 books getting published now every year which are like ‘powerful explorations’, powerful explorations of identity and family, powerful explorations of love, hope and gender, powerful explorations... it's all just buzzwords.
“It's just the vomiting up of regurgitated buzzwords that are endlessly recycled. And there's no truth in the desire for authenticity, because there's so many versions of authenticity that are very dark, that are very pessimistic, that are very nihilistic, very uncompromising.”
On how long-listing for the Booker has not brought him money.
“If I'm quite frank with you, I currently live in poverty. I live in government housing, I have a backlog of rent to pay. I owe the tax man money, when I go shopping for food I have to buy the cheapest products possible because I need to watch the pennies because I've stepped away from the streets.
“I know how to get money in the streets, but I stepped away and decided to devote myself entirely to writing and nothing has happened for me financially that I haven't been financially successful at all.
“I haven't even earned one royalty check from sales of my book. So, in that sense of success if we're talking about it as if the masses are running to read my book, no they're not running.
“But it's fine, it's fine, this is not a complaint as well. I don't want anyone to think that.”
Krauze is currently working on his second novel which will be partly set in Ukraine. He is appearing at WORD Christchurch in late August.
