Tom Knox: The Genesis Secret
Book Club Discussion

September 9, 2009. Tom Knox discusses his novel, The Genesis Secret, with Queenie C.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

I took a look at the book's website and read your article on Gobekli Tepe. I noticed some lines and situations from the book. How much of your experiences were written into this story?

A fair amount of my personal life has gone into the book. For a start, the hero is a foreign correspondent. I'm not saying I'm a "hero" - ! - but I have done a lot of foreign assignments for newspapers and magazines around the world. Some of it has been nice fluffy travel journalism, some of it has been grittier news journalism. But a couple of actual and distinct experiences have also been woven into the text: for instance, at one point Rob, the journalist, is kidnapped by a cult in Kurdistan. Believe it or not, I was once kidnapped - if only for one night - by the Lebanese radicals Hezbollah, in south Lebanon, about ten years ago. They often execute their victims, so I was extremely lucky to survive.

It was a terrifying experience, and I used my intense emotions from that time to give some authenticity to the kidnap scenes in the book. The sense of helplessness, and the sense of self-blame - "how could I have been so stupid" - they were lifted straight from my own emotions.

Another personal truth in the book is the "temple" - Gobekli Tepe, the real life and truly extraordinary megalithic complex at present being unearthed in eastern Turkey. I really went there in 2004, and had a mindblowing experience very similar to the one in the book. The archaeologists there really did say, and they really do believe, that there are allegorical links between the 12,000 year old stones they are digging out of the sand, and the Garden of Eden story in the Bible.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

Do you personally believe that cruelty could be genetic to some extent?

I do believe something happened to us about 12,000 years ago, when we moved from the relative leisure of hunter gathering, to the toils of agriculture. I don't want to give away the plot of the book, but I suspect that when people realized life had got tougher, they began to miss their life of ease - when they plucked fruit in Paradise. Then they realized that farming was destroying the landscape (most of the middle East was fertile forest before agriculture). They must have felt condemned by an angry God.

Perhaps they then responded with fury and violence. Human sacrifice. War and strife. In a situation like that, the cruel will prosper. It is interesting how the great religions of Abraham - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all reflect this. They are stories of war and mayhem and blood sacrifice, yet they also seek to raise man above his propensity for violence.

All these religions were born in the area of Gobekli Tepe. Abraham lived at Haran, very near the ancient complex.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

Was it difficult for you to write about the murders with such detail? Why did you decide to do it?

Because a chunk of the book is about the origins of human sacrifice - one of the most mysterious of human behaviourisms - it was entirely necessary to include descriptions of human sacrifice! I couldn't just say "oh and then he sacrificed him" and move on, the reader would feel cheated. Also, I needed to bring home to the reader the truly grotesque and horrifying nature of human sacrifice as it has been practised down the ages, from the Israelites to the Vikings to the Aztecs.

I know these scenes are fairly intense, some people have found them upsetting. But the book has now sold in 23 countries, so clearly a lot of people also find them interesting! And of course this is a thriller. It is meant to be somewhat scary.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

Can you explain the significance of including the story of Forrester's daughter in this book? Was it strictly for empathy?

It was mainly for empathy. I wanted there to be an emotional link between Forrester the policeman and Rob the journalist. The daughter of the latter is in trouble, and the former has profound sympathy because of what happened to his own child. But there were other reasons. I also wanted to give Forrester some backstory, to make him a more complex and interesting character, not just a cookie-cutter thriller detective (hard drinking, etc etc). He needed some conflicts and a hint of melancholy - or so I felt.

Finally there is theme of "the lost child" throughout the book. So his backstory fitted that, too.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

On a lighter note, a quote from the book reads: "I often wonder why the British are so adept at Children's literature." You then go on to mention authors such as Lewis Carrol, Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl. You also mention books such as Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. What are some of your favorite children's books and authors?

I love Tove Jansson (to choose someone who is not British!). Her books about the Moomintrolls in Finland were probably my favourite books as a kid. There was an emotional richness to them, a northern sadness, a drunken summertime giddiness, I just loved them. And they had fascinating characters with cool names - the Hemulen, Snufkin, Moominpappa. She was a fascinating character, Tove Jansson: a very free spirit, and a lesbian, she also wrote very fine adult novels, but it's her kids books that really glow.

The Narnia Chronicles were also a great love of mine in my childhood. I find the movie adaptations of CS Lewis a tiny bit mawkish but that's common, isn't it, to be disappointed by movies made out of books you really cherish?!

I read one Harry Potter and was mildly unimpressed. Yet I really enjoy the movies. Hah.

Finally I truly admire the books of Philip Pullman - the Golden Compass etc. They are supposedly aimed at children but they are in truth very adult, and full of rich and fascinating ideas. The writing is also very fine, lyrical and descriptive. That's maybe what I missed in Harry Potter: JK Rowling can write a cracking plot, and she deserves all her success, but I find the writing itself slightly flat. But that could be jealousy...

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

Can you tell us what you are working on next? Will you continue to use your life experiences as storylines?

I guess one day I will run out of life experiences to smuggle into my books, but happily I have had a fairly crazy life so I've got a way to go before that happens. I am now completing the 2nd Tom Knox thriller, called the Marks of Cain. Again it is based on a real life mystery, in this case the remarkable story of the Cagots, an enigmatic tribe of outcasts who really lived in France from the 13th to the 18th centuries. They had their own doors in churches, their own ghettos, their own jobs, they had to ring a bell when they walked around so people could avoid them. They were thought to be infectious and mad, yet they were perfectly healthy. And no one knows who they really were or where they came from.

I got the idea when I actually met a Cagot! One of the few people in the world who can trace her descent from these strange pariahs. It was quite a moment, this woman in the Pyrenees telling me about her amazing ancestral backstory. She was the last of the Cagots, the last of Europe's Untouchables. But who were they...? And so the mystery begins.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Tom Knox

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