LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 42

shape. “There was something about telling the story from a fictitious
point of view that made it easier to do.”
From that starting point, his bigger idea was to write a book whose
chapters could run nonsequentially. “I wanted it to be like you could
chuck them into the air and read them in any order, because that’s what
it’s like to be blown up. I liked the idea of creating a puzzle with each
chapter. I wanted the reader to ask, ‘Where am I?’”
The challenging form of the book also saves it from falling into traps
faced by other war novels. “War can be presented as quite black and
white, it can be quite ‘them and us’.” Anatomy of a Soldier, meanwhile,
is nuanced and wonderfully complex. PE
Anatomy of a Soldier will be published by Faber in the spring, £14.99
Nadim Safdar: ‘The book’s about love, not suicide bombers’

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