(Bétaille) Translated into thirty languages, the Scottish author Peter May documents himself at length, travels, then isolates himself to write, connected to the problems of the world which feed his latest novels, such as the migrant crisis or global warming.
Before publishing his first book at the age of 26, Peter May was first a reporter, then a screenwriter for series in Scotland. “I wanted to make a living by writing,” he told AFP, during a meeting in France, where he has lived for more than twenty years.
Expelled from high school in the 1960s, this rebel dreamed of becoming a writer. “But there were no courses for that at the university! “remembers laughing this author with some 29 novels, born in Glasgow on December 20, 1951.
Literary fame will come late with The island of the bird huntersfirst published in its French translation in 2010. No English-speaking publisher had smelled the potential of the first volume of the Lewis trilogy, which then sold more than three million copies.
Loving “the dark novel, which immerses you in an atmosphere”, Danielle Dastugue, founder of the Rouergue editions, a French house, took the risk.
Atmosphere and characters
” In The island of the bird huntersthere is everything: magnificent characters, breathtaking landscapes […] Peter was maybe ahead of the Scandinavian wave which is in that vein,” she says.
Peter May’s style is marked by his years in the world of television and the press: “I learned, he explains, to write very quickly”, to “do research on any subject , without fear of picking up the phone to consult an expert”.
“He spends a lot of time in thinking, building the plot, the sets, the characters,” confirms Nathalie Démoulin, his editor at Rouergue. She is still surprised to have received her premonitory in full confinement Quarantinewritten in 2005, then “forgotten” in its archives.
When writing, Peter May locks himself in his office, where a vast library contains the multiple editions of his books.
“I get up at 6 a.m. and write 3,000 words a day. If it’s good, I finish at noon, if not at midnight. I stop at 3000e word, even in the middle of a sentence”, he explains, revealing, mischievously, his anti-blocking secret of the blank page. Before this intense phase of “six to eight weeks”, there is “the seed of an idea”, which he spends three to four months developing.
Down to the smallest detail
“He likes everything to be absolutely perfect […] wants to visit every place that appears in the book”, specifies his wife Janice Hally, former screenwriter, who accompanied him “behind the scenes of the Chinese police” or the kitchen of a starred French chef.
Peter May made an exception for A path without forgiveness, released in 1992, revised and to be published on May 3 in France. The story is played against a backdrop of war in Cambodia and the crisis of ” boat people evokes the pangs of post-traumatic stress.
“He couldn’t go to Cambodia at that time: it was tense! “, recalls the former French general André Sellier, who was then serving in the country for the United Nations and translated the book.
At 71, the prolific Peter May no longer intends to inflict on himself the “pressure” of one novel a year and devote himself to his passion of “making music with friends”. But he does not lose sight of the concerns of the planet. So A Winter Gravescheduled for next year in French, will address climate change through a crime, during an ice age in thirty years.
A new ” page turner » of this writer who, according to Danielle Dastugue, « gives happiness to great readers and the desire to read to others: when you fall into a Peter May, you no longer want to leave it, except to read the next one ».