The inspiration behind Darjeeling Inheritance
By Liz Harris
To explain the inspiration behind Darjeeling Inheritance, I have to go back a few years.
My debut novel, published in 2012, was set in the 1950s, in London and in Ladakh, an Indian province that lies between the Karakoram range to the north and the Himalayas to the south. My uncle had visited Ladakh while stationed in North India in the 1940s, and had compiled an album of his visit on his return. This had unexpectedly come into my temporary possession, and when I read the album, I was inspired to set a story in that region.
A page of Uncle Kenneth’s album
I’d so enjoyed learning about an area new to me, and getting to know how the Ladakhi lived, that after I’d finished the book, with a deadline to produce another within a year, I looked for a location that would give me similar satisfaction, as I was to do ever after.
Having lived in California for six years, it probably wasn’t surprising that I ended up locating the next book in the US. I set it in Wyoming in 1887, which was a transitional year for Wyoming Territory. As part of my research, I spent three wonderful weeks in Wyoming, travelling through a large part of the State, and visiting every museum I could.
Arriving in Wyoming
Wyoming gave me a wealth of material, and I ended up setting three novels there. After that, I felt I should look for a different location for my next novel, and when I was browsing in a book shop, looking for ideas, I saw the title 1,000 Places To See Before You Die, and I couldn’t resist it.
When I got the book home, it fell open at a section about Darjeeling, in West Bengal, India, where there was a picture of a tea plantation. That looks interesting, I thought. I’d read in the past, and very much enjoyed, A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster, The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott, and The Far Pavilions, by M.M. Kaye. And I felt drawn to India.
I wasn’t to write Darjeeling Inheritance, however, until three years after that. Shortly after purchasing the travel book, I visited a friend in New York. At the time I had a single-line idea for a story in the back of my mind, which wouldn’t have worked in the Darjeeling background. But the moment I walked into the Tenement Museum in Orchard Street, New York, flesh gathered around my single-line skeleton, and before I’d even returned to the UK, I’d started to write The Dark Horizon, the first of the three standalone novels in the Linford Series.
The Tenement Museum, Orchard Street, New York
As soon as I’d finished writing the third novel, The Lengthening Shadow, I returned to Darjeeling in my mind. By then, I had an idea for a Darjeeling-based story, which I felt in my heart would work. And I began to research the novel.
The more that I found out about the history of the area, and about the method of tea production, the more my story filled out and grew. And the more I learnt about the flora, fauna, climate and terrain of Darjeeling, the more my setting took shape.
And as it did so, I became increasingly keen to go to Darjeeling and visit the tea gardens and town for myself, and not just rely on books and the internet. There can be no greater inspiration than standing on the ground where your characters will walk, and breathing the air they’ll breathe.
So I booked a trip there two Octobers ago. Sadly, two months before I was due to leave, the Foreign Office advised against going there owing to trouble between the Bengali and Nepali. The issues are now resolved, but at that time, the tea gardens were closed and so, too, most of the hotels.
I went instead to South India, a trip which included Munnar, in Kerala, which is famous for its tea plantations and tea factory. It was a truly wonderful trip, and I felt very close to my characters as I walked between the rows of tea bushes, and stood in the factory watching the process of tea production.
The magical Backwaters in Kerala, India
The result of my research, derived from personal experience and through books and the internet, is Darjeeling Inheritance, a novel that I loved writing.
If I can substitute ‘writing a story’ for ‘genius’, I can paraphrase Edison. Writing a novel is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. It’s by applying yourself as hard as you can to every aspect of your research that you give body to that inspiration, which it’s been a real pleasure to do with every book I’ve written.
Start your reading adventure...
This novel is available to read with #KindleUnlimited subscription
Liz Harris
Born in London, Liz Harris graduated from university with a Law degree, and then moved to California, where she led a varied life, from waitressing on Sunset Strip to working as secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company.
Six years later, she returned to London and completed a degree in English, after which she taught secondary school pupils, first in Berkshire, and then in Cheshire.
In addition to the ten novels she’s had published, she’s had several short stories in anthologies and magazines.
Liz now lives in Oxfordshire. An active member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Historical Novel Society, her interests are travel, the theatre, reading and cryptic crosswords. To find out more about Liz, visit her website at: www.lizharrisauthor.com
Social Media Links:
