Jason Wallace
About Author
Born in Cheltenham in 1969, I spent my earlier years growing up in south-west London until my family upped and packed for a new life in southern Africa. Specifically, in Zimbabwe, where I encountered a tough, but excellent boarding school and a world of fantastic experience.
Descendent of an International cricketer and sea-sickness sufferer - in the days when the only means of reaching the tour of Australia required many weeks at sea I realised ambition was similarly never going to be easy when I decided, at the age of seventeen, that I wanted to be an author.
I'd always had a fertile imagination, but as far as I'm concerned it's the school I need to thank for inadvertently nurturing my will to write through strong discipline (there was no such thing as an excuse) and a sound education, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Author link
Interview
OUT OF SHADOWS
Published by Andersen Press
January 2010
Jason Wallace, who recently won the 2011 Costa Children's Book Award for his debut novel Out of Shadows (Andersen Press), attributes his success to the 'honesty' of the story.
Despite the prevalence of celebrity publishing, he believes that there is still a call for "something going back to more traditional storytelling". "That's what caught my agent's and editor's attention; the story was true, not easy but true, and does what it says it's going to do." says Wallace. "I think that the reader becomes a lot more involved in the story that way."
Wallace's publisher, Andersen Press, is known for taking on controversial YA novels including Annexed (Sharon Dogar) and Junk (Melvin Burgess) that other publishers steer away from.
Out of Shadows is about an English boy called Robert who is sent to boarding school in post-Colonial Zimbabwe. While his school is no longer segregated, tension between black and white students and some teachers remains and grows, fuelled by an inherent bullying culture within the school.
Eventually, the white students decide to take the law into their own hands and to use the school as the setting for a plot to kill Zimbabwe's corrupt president, Robert Mugabe.
As these events unfold, Robert has to make his own decisions about where his loyalties lie and his actions reverberate well into adulthood.
The book is drawn from Wallace's own teenage memories, having spent his teenage years in a boarding school in Zimbabwe, and draws on the voices he remembers hearing during that time.
"It is autobiographical in that I was there when the book is set, 1983 to 88, as well as the day to day events and the way the school in the story runs," says Wallace, "But people are surprised to hear that I actually enjoyed my school days in Zimbabwe, I had a great time - but that doesn't make a great story and the idea, the what if?, came into my head as a storyline to use to set my experiences against."
The idea, what if Mugabe had been or could have been killed?, poses the same dilemma as 'what if someone had killed Hitler?', and Robert has to decide whether you can justify taking a life to prevent more deaths? In Out of Shadows, the dilemma is more acutely between choosing a past way of life and moving into the future.
The violence within the story (and it is a violent book) is largely white against black, although Mugabe's excessive violence against blacks is also documented.
Wallace recalls that, while no one at the school he attended as a teenager suffered from racial bullying, there were derogatory remarks about black people. "It was ingrained from the days of Rhodesia, which was a foreign country to me," he says. "I did do some research into what it was like during the war for both black and white people and found a lot of resilience on both sides in the face of many hardships."
He adds, "There was a lot of violence during the war, on both sides, but I was most shocked to learn about the violence after the war on Mugabe's side and to find out what he did to the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. They suffered a huge amount and it was horrific to see that."
Within the story, the evil is not confined to one side or the other. Wallace explains, "I just wanted to show that people could be evil. I deliberately set out to make the violence quite shocking and that was heavily edited out."
The worst violence in the book is experienced by Nelson, the black boy who befriends Robert at the start of the story, perpetrated by a white boy Ivan whose family suffered terribly during the Rhodesian war. "Ivan is evil and we are told the reasons why he is as he is, but he is ultimately a bad guy," says Wallace.
The character he most enjoyed creating is Weekend, a black employee at the white school, who befriends Robert. "He was a breath of fresh air. He looked at things from a very different angle and had a very simple point of view.
"I think quite often people can get bogged down by complications that are not really there; life doesn't have to be that hard," says Wallace. "Weekend suffers for his outlook but remains positive. I enjoyed him. I see the whole book as positive, if not upbeat."
Wallace did not write the book with a particular audience in mind but said he is interested in writing more for YA readers. "As an adult you remember things that happened in your teen years and which didn't make sense at the time, but as an adult you can revisit and explore them in a more articulate way."
He adds, "I always tell the kids I visit in schools that the little decisions you make as teenagers can have a huge impact on the rest of your life, just as they did for Robert in Out of Shadows. He decides to keep in with the 'cool kids' and that's not always the right decision."
He says his next book will set in Europe and will be another historical novel. "I tend to stick with historical timelines and to look back in history and find a time and events and create a story from that."
Jason Wallace, who recently won the 2011 Costa Children's Book Award for his debut novel Out of Shadows (Andersen Press), attributes his success to the 'honesty' of the story.
Despite the prevalence of celebrity publishing, he believes that there is still a call for "something going back to more traditional storytelling". "That's what caught my agent's and editor's attention; the story was true, not easy but true, and does what it says it's going to do." says Wallace. "I think that the reader becomes a lot more involved in the story that way."
Wallace's publisher, Andersen Press, is known for taking on controversial YA novels including Annexed (Sharon Dogar) and Junk (Melvin Burgess) that other publishers steer away from.
Out of Shadows is about an English boy called Robert who is sent to boarding school in post-Colonial Zimbabwe. While his school is no longer segregated, tension between black and white students and some teachers remains and grows, fuelled by an inherent bullying culture within the school.
Eventually, the white students decide to take the law into their own hands and to use the school as the setting for a plot to kill Zimbabwe's corrupt president, Robert Mugabe.
As these events unfold, Robert has to make his own decisions about where his loyalties lie and his actions reverberate well into adulthood.
The book is drawn from Wallace's own teenage memories, having spent his teenage years in a boarding school in Zimbabwe, and draws on the voices he remembers hearing during that time.
"It is autobiographical in that I was there when the book is set, 1983 to 88, as well as the day to day events and the way the school in the story runs," says Wallace, "But people are surprised to hear that I actually enjoyed my school days in Zimbabwe, I had a great time - but that doesn't make a great story and the idea, the what if?, came into my head as a storyline to use to set my experiences against."
The idea, what if Mugabe had been or could have been killed?, poses the same dilemma as 'what if someone had killed Hitler?', and Robert has to decide whether you can justify taking a life to prevent more deaths? In Out of Shadows, the dilemma is more acutely between choosing a past way of life and moving into the future.
The violence within the story (and it is a violent book) is largely white against black, although Mugabe's excessive violence against blacks is also documented.
Wallace recalls that, while no one at the school he attended as a teenager suffered from racial bullying, there were derogatory remarks about black people. "It was ingrained from the days of Rhodesia, which was a foreign country to me," he says. "I did do some research into what it was like during the war for both black and white people and found a lot of resilience on both sides in the face of many hardships."
He adds, "There was a lot of violence during the war, on both sides, but I was most shocked to learn about the violence after the war on Mugabe's side and to find out what he did to the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. They suffered a huge amount and it was horrific to see that."
Within the story, the evil is not confined to one side or the other. Wallace explains, "I just wanted to show that people could be evil. I deliberately set out to make the violence quite shocking and that was heavily edited out."
The worst violence in the book is experienced by Nelson, the black boy who befriends Robert at the start of the story, perpetrated by a white boy Ivan whose family suffered terribly during the Rhodesian war. "Ivan is evil and we are told the reasons why he is as he is, but he is ultimately a bad guy," says Wallace.
The character he most enjoyed creating is Weekend, a black employee at the white school, who befriends Robert. "He was a breath of fresh air. He looked at things from a very different angle and had a very simple point of view.
"I think quite often people can get bogged down by complications that are not really there; life doesn't have to be that hard," says Wallace. "Weekend suffers for his outlook but remains positive. I enjoyed him. I see the whole book as positive, if not upbeat."
Wallace did not write the book with a particular audience in mind but said he is interested in writing more for YA readers. "As an adult you remember things that happened in your teen years and which didn't make sense at the time, but as an adult you can revisit and explore them in a more articulate way."
He adds, "I always tell the kids I visit in schools that the little decisions you make as teenagers can have a huge impact on the rest of your life, just as they did for Robert in Out of Shadows. He decides to keep in with the 'cool kids' and that's not always the right decision."
He says his next book will set in Europe and will be another historical novel. "I tend to stick with historical timelines and to look back in history and find a time and events and create a story from that."
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