Conny Braam

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The Struggle For Political Freedom Inspires Conny Braam

Author of The Cocaine Salesman, Dutch writer Conny Braam explains to Jane Wharam what motivated her to write the book and why she became a political activist and then novelist in her native Holland.

Braam: “I was inspired as a very young girl by my grandfather, who wanted me to be the first published author in our family of story-tellers,so I started when I was fifteen and got some short stories into a few youth magazines. Then I got involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, unaware that it would take up so much ofmy life, but it gave me the sort of experience I could only have dreamed of. “

Wharam: “You ran the movement in Holland for a while, didn’t you?”

Braam: “Yes, I was chair of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement between 1969 and 1994 and got to know so many interesting people whose lives were dedicated to the struggle for freedom and my involvement in the movement took me to Africa, where I learned many important lessons in life.

However, my first serious writing started after the release of Mandela with the publication of my first book, Operation Vula, which is autobiographical and is about a group of Dutch people involved in the underground struggle. The book was translated into English and is still in print.

Wharam: “So who influenced you apart from your grandfather?”

Braam :“My writing has been influenced by the old Russian authors, especially Nicolaj Gogol, whose humour fascinated me. Then there are people like Kafka and Paustovsky and a lot of South American writers - the ones who wrote about the struggle for freedom in a way that has never been done in Europe - like Marquez,Traven, Vargas Llose or Fuentes

And being an old-fashioned girl, my political heroes are people like Che Guevara, Hannie Schaft (aheroine of Dutch resistance in WWII) and of course Nelson Mandela. Again my inspiration comes from the struggle for real freedom.

Wharam: “One of the things that fascinated me about The Cocaine Salesman was that cocaine was sold legally to huge pharmaceutical companies, such as Merck and our own Burroughs-Wellcome. What inspired you to write about this particular aspect of WW1?”

Braam: 'The idea came to me when I was researching the history of the Dutch involvement in the opium trade during the same era. While reading about the government-owned opium factory in Indonesia, I discovered that there had been a Dutch cocaine factory and, what’s more, that it had stood around the corner fromthe house where I had lived for years! I wasn’t really surprised that the factory existed as, cocaine was a legal product at the time and the Dutch, like the English, have many dark pages in their history books. But the fact that the cocaine was used on purpose in the trenches was more than a surprise; it made me very angry and that always gives me a lot of energy for writing. And, of course another reason to write the story was that I'm always interested in these dark pages. Anything that Dutch historians and politicians try to hide interests me. I don’t think that the oldactivist in me will ever die!”

Wharam: “So what are you doing currently, Conny? Are you still inspired by political injustice and the struggle for freedom?

Braam: 'Of course! In fact, I am working on a new book that will be published later this year, I hope. Called Sjaco, the book tells the story of a young thief who lived at the beginning of the 18th century in Amsterdam and his struggle against the cream of Amsterdam society, who lived in the beautiful houses along the Amsterdam canals. Known as the Robin Hood of Holland, he had many adventures but, in the end, was sentenced to death because he couldn't explain how he got the money to buy his girlfriend her beautiful clothes. I wanted to research where the money of the elite who persecuted him came from and found that it was by trading in slaves on a huge scale!  So, again this is a subject that fits me like a glove!”

The Cocaine Salesman (Haus) by Conny Braam, translated by Jonathan Reeder, ISBN 9781907822056 has been described as ‘a tense historical novel ... a multi-layered, fictional story of self-deception, morality and betrayal.’

It is available from WH Smith, Waterstones and any independent bookshop and by mail order from Haus Publishing -http://www.hauspublishing.com/