Guest blog by
Laila Lalami, author of
Secret Son
Laila can be found online at
lailalalami.com
For
the first two years during which I worked on my novel, I didn't have a title for
it. It was simply labeled The Novel, both in my computer and in my
head. Perhaps this was because I really wasn't sure what the book was going to
be about. It started out as a historical novel, following two generations of
two Moroccan families after independence; then I cut out the historical part;
and eventually I got rid of one of the families. As my focus narrowed, my story
became clearer to me. The Novel was about Youssef, a student and movie
lover, who lives in a slum outside Casablanca. He discovers that his entire existence has been a lie--his dead and respectably
poor father turns out to be a wealthy businessman who is very much alive. This
discovery sets him on a journey to find his father and the truth.
Because the main story was set against a background of corrupt liberalism and
Islamic fundamentalism, I thought that those thematic concerns would be the main
driving force in the book. Soon, however, I came to see that in fact the novel
was about belonging--or, rather, about the complications and difficulties
thereof. As the story progresses, Youssef has to negotiate competing
allegiances of family, society, and ideology. So I came up with the title
The Place We Call Home and used that for the next three drafts, by which
point I grew suspicious of it. Who is the We who calls a particular
place home? It seemed confusing to use the first-person plural for a story told
in the third-person. It was time for something more specific.
That was when I hit upon The Outsider. Perfect
title, I thought. I stuck with it for the next three years and the next eight
drafts. Then I turned my book in to my publisher. Almost right away, my editor
called me and asked, "Isn't there another book called The Outsider?""
Now, as a Moroccan, my first thought was of Albert Camus' L'Etranger, for
which the American title is The Stranger and the British title is... The
Outsider. My American editor, of course, was rather thinking of S.E.
Hinton's The Outsiders. I told her I would try to think of a new title,
though I wasn't sure I could find one that fit so well.
For weeks, I went around thinking of new titles. House
of Consequence? Too vague. The Betrayal? Too ominous. Death in
Casablanca? Too crime-novelish. None seemed to work. I worried that I'd
have to go back to calling the book The Novel. In the summer of 2008, I
went to hear Salman Rushdie read from The Enchantress of Florence at
Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena. As he was signing my copy, he asked whether I
had finished my book and what it was called.
"Yes, it's
finished," I said, "and it's called...well, it's called The Outsider, but
my publisher doesn't like the title..."
"You do realize that that title is already taken?"
"Yes,"
I sighed. "I know."
"It's like
naming a book Heart of Darkness," he laughed.
Heart of Darkness! I thought. What didn't I think
of that? Why are all the great titles taken? But, of course, he was right. I
had to stop dragging my feet and come up with a new title. I started to play on
variations of the word "Son," coming up with different adjectives for it until I
hit up on the simplest, and most descriptive one. And that was how The Novel became Secret Son.
View the book's trailer here.
