Jason Wallace

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  Your questions

  My answers

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  Vintage edition

  Out of Shadows

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  Meet the author

  BBC

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  Costa promo

  Out of Shadows

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  Brazilian edition

  Fora Das Sombras

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  Costa awards

  with Tim Bowler

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  Andersen edition

  Out of Shadows

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  Norwegian editon

  Der Skyggene Faller

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  Holiday House

  web site

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  Andersen Press

  web site

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  Vintage Publishing

  web site

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  Monty

  our dog!

Awards

Costa

The Book Awards were established by Whitbread in 1971 and encouraged, promoted and celebrated the enjoyment of reading. They became the Costa Book Awards in 2006… See more

UKLA

The UKLA Book Award, sponsored by MLS is a national award conferred by education professionals and it is held in high esteem by teachers, who regard the shortlist as a reliable indicator of the best books of the year for inclusion in class and school collections… See more

Branford Boase

The Branford Boase Award was set up to reward the most promising new writers and their editors, as well as to reward excellence in writing and in publishing. The Award is made annually to the most promising book for seven year-olds and upwards by a first time novelist... See more

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Out of Shadows

Rights sold to USA, Norway, France, Turkey and Brazil.

a children's classic - Daily Express             gripping - The Times             a powerful, devastating read - Patrick Ness             impossible to look away - Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief             excellent - Independent on Sunday             a provocative story, powerfully written - Keith Gray             mastery - Kirkus Magazine, starred review             original...thought-provoking and ultimately shocking - Good Book Guide              one of those rare, outstanding books - Browns Books for Students             extraordinary... startlingly original - The Bookseller             expert and disturbing - Book Trust             memorable, moving and disturbing - Lovereading4kids             gripping - Write Away

Zimbabwe, 1980s...

The war is over, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. It is the end of the Old Way and the start of a promising new era. For Robert Jacklin, it's all new: new continent, new country, new school. And very quickly he is forced to understand a new way of thinking, because for some of his classmates the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on… white boys who want their old country back, not this new black African government. Boys like Ivan. Clever, cunning, wicked Ivan. For him, there is still one last battle to fight, and he's taking it right to the very top…

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Your questions

Did you realize you wanted to be a writer when you were young?

As a young child I certainly had a very vivid imagination and was always losing myself in daydreams. And my mum was forever having to tell me to turn the light off because I’d be up deep into the night with my nose in a book of some sort. But it wasn’t until I got to senior school that I realised how much I enjoyed writing (and I seemed to be pretty good at it too). I was about seventeen when I decided I wanted to be an author and write for a living.

What sorts of books did you enjoy when you were young? What was your favorite?

When I was very young I would spend hours reading the likes of Roald Dahl, and I loved the Winnie the Pooh stories (I still do as an adult!). And comic books like Asterix and Tintin were never left alone for long. As a teenager I fed myself a diet of horror, practically eating the pages of James Herbert and Stephen King. In fact, Stephen King was a huge influence on my desire to write, I always wanted to emulate the way he tells a great story and molds tremendous characters.My favourite Stephen King book probably has to be Misery – a master-class of suspense and character development!

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What made you decide to start writing Out of Shadows?

I had been writing books and trying to get published for a number of years before Out of Shadows. It was at a time I’d thought about giving up writing for good when it suddenly hit me to write about what I really know – growing up in a boys’ boarding school in Zimbabwe.

Initially, it was only going to be a “character” story about school, and how evil could be allowed to breed in such an environment – politics wasn’t going to come into it. But Robert Mugabe had been in the news a lot at the time I started to write for his so-called “land grabs”, when he stole another election and endorsed the brutal policy of taking white-owned farms. A great “What if…?” suddenly popped into my head, and the story practically wrote itself.

This is your first novel. How would you describe the experience?

Writing a novel is never easy, and there were certainly moments when I thought I should give up, that it wasn’t ever going to be as good as I wanted it to be. But ultimately it was a pleasurable experience, because a large part of the story was based around personal experience, and it was great to be able to re-live some great memories of mine (remembering school in general, that is, the extreme violence that happens in the book is fiction!).

How did your experience in Zimbabwe influence your book?

A tremendous amount. My memories influenced the book hugely. And by that I don’t mean that all the events you read actually happened (it is still fiction), but I could see the colors of southern Africa, I could smell the smells and hear the accents when my characters spoke. That helped breathe real life into the book, and was a huge advantage to me when putting pen to paper.

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