British politician Salman Shaheen’s debut novel debates essential questions on humanity and expertise.
Salman Shaheen is a British Labour Celebration politician and now novelist, whose debut novel, Freebourne, begins like a comfortable crime, the type one can learn curled up on a sofa with a cup of sizzling chocolate. Quickly, nonetheless, it evolves right into a thriller that retains the reader guessing till the top.
Freebourne, Salman Shaheen, Roundfire, 2025
Set in a picturesque city in southern England, the ebook’s protagonist is Dr Harry Coulson, a ‘mind-tech entrepreneur’, a time period Shaheen makes use of to explain expertise that straight interacts with human consciousness. Coulson strikes to Freebourne to begin a brand new life after a messy divorce.
There hasn’t been a homicide in Freebourne in over 100 years. However, on his first night within the city, Coulson discovers the physique of Serena Brandreth, the daughter of one of many wealthiest males within the county. He turns into a suspect in her homicide, pulling him right into a harmful internet of secrets and techniques and lies.
The ebook shall be launched on November 1 and is out there for pre-order on-line. Shaheen speaks in regards to the themes of his ebook, his message to the world, and his literary influences.
Your grandmother was one of the well-known Urdu short-story writers and critics of her time. How did your South Asian heritage form your love for tradition and writing?
My grandmother, Mumtaz Shirin, was a distinguished author within the subcontinent. Sadly, she handed away earlier than I used to be born, however her love for the written phrase – of tales – was handed right down to my father and thru him to me. I’m overjoyed now to be releasing my debut novel in India, and I hope it honours her legacy. I additionally keep in mind my father studying Shakespeare to me once I was solely six years outdated, and my love of languages and writing stems from my heritage.
After ending my college research, I moved to London’s various borough of Hounslow. I grew to become lively in the local people and was elected as a councillor. Representing this neighborhood fascinated me and let me reconnect with my roots.
You’ve got described Freebourne as a genre-defying novel that blends the intrigue of a homicide thriller with the load of literary fiction. How did you navigate that stability with out letting both ingredient overshadow the opposite?
I didn’t wish to write a traditional whodunit. Freebourne is a philosophical thriller disguised as a homicide thriller. I wish to problem the concept crime thrillers cannot be critical and literary. Homicide mysteries can do greater than entertain. They’re the best automobile for weighty themes as a result of they’ve mass-market attraction.
After I was a 20-year-old pupil in Cambridge, writer Jill Paton Walsh provided me some recommendation: “In case you have one thing significant to say to the world, smuggle it in a homicide thriller.” So I’ve smuggled these political and philosophical concepts throughout the conventions of a homicide thriller.
The novel combines a fast-paced plot and twists with literary depth. Its characters, fashion, and language are deliberately wealthy.
The novel is ready within the close to future towards the backdrop of advancing AI expertise. A debate runs by way of the ebook over whether or not expertise, which may erase recollections and management the thoughts, is helpful or detrimental to humanity.
There’s a large Black Mirror-like twist in direction of the top. That’s the reason I describe Freebourne as genre-defying.
In Freebourne, you discover the intersection of expertise and humanity, delving into philosophical questions on what occurs when people try to play God. What are your personal ideas on how expertise is altering the world?
Know-how, the genie, is out of the bottle now, and it is by no means going again. Know-how is wondrous for progress, but when it is within the fallacious fingers, or if we do not put ample checks and balances on it, it may possibly do extra hurt than good.
Societies globally, together with India and the UK, are in a state of super flux. We’re on the cusp of an AI revolution that’s remodeling the economic system.
Within the ebook, Dr Harry Coulson is on a mission to invent a brand new expertise referred to as Polaris, which is able to allow individuals to look at their traumatic recollections and course of them, serving to them to beat grief and ache.
A philosophical debate runs by way of the novel over whether or not that is a superb factor or a foul factor. What would we be if we might shut off our ache? Would we nonetheless be good individuals?
Even in free societies, a lot of our lives is managed by expertise, authorities, algorithms, social media, or the media we eat. We might imagine we’re free, however we should ask ourselves: Are we actually free? What are expertise and society doing to situation us?
Who’re your largest influences, literary and outdoors the world of literature?
I’ve all the time been drawn to darkish, speculative tales that look at the intersection of expertise and human society, from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror to Kazuo Ishiguro’s By no means Let Me Go.
My earliest literary influences had been what my dad learn to me as a baby: Shakespeare and Tolkien. There are various Shakespearean references in Freebourne, and the politician Elliott Nwosu, a personality within the novel, is impressed by Othello’s Iago.
Writers who’ve influenced my prose embrace Zadie Smith, Gabriel García Márquez, Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, Kerouac, and Jill Paton Walsh. Orwell is a giant affect, as are Rousseau and Marx, and so is Star Trek!
The ebook is ready in a small English city, but it offers with world themes of expertise and energy. What drew you to this juxtaposition?
I like the English conference of a small-town homicide thriller. This sort of juxtaposition between what the reader expects and what they get retains them on edge.
It pulls the rug out from below your ft, and it’s meant to create unease and stress, making individuals really feel that one thing’s not fairly proper.
What was essentially the most difficult a part of writing Freebourne?
The novel had been within the works since 2021, and the characters had been a part of me for a really very long time. There are some deaths within the ebook that basically touched me, and I discovered it difficult to put in writing these as a result of I recognized with lots of the characters.
How does being a politician influence your literary work?
Every little thing I write is political to a point, whether or not it is journalism or fiction. Freebourne is not a political thriller, however it’s a thriller unafraid to deal with subjects similar to civil liberties, the influence of expertise, and state management over human freedom. A central character is an MP.
He is not based mostly on anybody I do know, however I see the rise of right-wing populism and politicians exploiting tragic conditions. The character could be very a lot a response to it – as I describe him, “a fly drawn to the chance of a carcass”. Take a look at what Nigel Farage is doing, whipping up hatred over immigration within the UK, and that description can be fairly charitable.
As for my very own politics, I am concerned in environmental tasks and have led campaigns to protect inexperienced areas. I’ve fought to guard acres of wildlife habitats, and launched efforts to rework wasteland throughout Hounslow into neighborhood gardens for youngsters in disadvantaged areas.
This text went stay on October second, two thousand twenty 5, at twenty-three minutes previous twelve at midday.
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