More than a decade ago, Kate Mosse had a vision of sorts in the Huguenot graveyard in Franschhoek, South Africa. “I suddenly had a very clear image of a woman in 19th-century clothing, leaning forward to rub the lichen from a gravestone,” says Mosse. “Twelve years later, I’ve discovered who she is.”
At the time, Mosse knew nothing about the history of the French Protestant refugees who, fleeing Catholic persecution in their homeland, settled in the Cape Colony on Africa’s southernmost tip in 1688, and whose legacy – both genetic and cultural – is still alive in modern day South Africa. “I thought, I’ve got to write this book. I’ve got to find out who she is, and who is buried in the ground,” recalls Mosse, who actually has Huguenot ancestry of her own, albeit from a branch who settled in England, where she lives.
Books we’re reading and loving this week
One internationally bestselling series later, Mosse finally has that answer. It’s one that she reveals in the fourth and final book in her Joubert Family Chronicles, this year’s The Map of Bones.
But it was an answer she didn’t yet have when she successfully pitched the series to her publisher: Mosse distinctly remembers someone touching her on the arm as she left that meeting, saying she couldn’t wait to find out who the woman was. Mosse turned to her agent and said, “Her and me both.”
This discovering-as-you-go is par for the course for Mosse, highly acclaimed author of historical fiction, founder director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, playwright, trustee of the British Library. Last year she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King Charles.
“It’s what I call the whispering in the landscape, and it happens with every novel,” says Mosse. “I think, I don’t know how I’m going to write this, I don’t know how I’m going to do all the research, I don’t know what the story is, but I know there’s something. It’s up to me to excavate it.”
The Globe spoke with Mosse about her famous name twin, revisiting her breakthrough novel and giving voice to the other half of history.
When I was thinking of all the things we could talk about, it was a little overwhelming because you are a tremendously accomplished woman …
I’m quite old. That’s how it works – I’ve just been around a long time. [Laughs]
So let’s start with something silly. What’s it like having the same name as one of the most famous supermodels ever to exist?
I really admire her. It’s one thing if you share a name with someone who is truly appalling, and right at the moment we can think of quite a lot of people you wouldn’t want to share a name with. But, I think she’s amazing.
What is funny is, of course, she’s a lot younger than me, and obviously she’s one of the most beautiful women in the world. When she started to become famous, before I had my breakthrough novel Labyrinth, people would be sent to pick up Kate Moss, and then the poor taxi driver’s face would fall when I opened the door and it was this small, sort of “writing” Englishwoman. Not quite who they were hoping for.
My American agent is called George Lucas, and his office called up and asked for a table for George Lucas and Kate Mosse. When we arrived, there were just so many paparazzi outside, and we thought, “Oh, I wonder who’s here.” When we gave our names, you could just see everyone’s faces, like, “Oh my God.” Clearly some waiter had seen the book and rung up [the paparazzi]. We were shown to the best table, the most visible table … and then we noticed the photographers, one by one, packing up their bags.
As you say, it’s 20 years since Labyrinth, which was such a big moment for you. With two decades of hindsight, how do you remember that period of your life?
It feels like another lifetime, but it also feels like yesterday. I was very lucky, because Labyrinth changed my life. It meant I could be a full-time writer. None of us start writing novels thinking you’re going to make a living out of it, support a family on the back of it, but that’s what it did.
Re-reading Labyrinth, did you access parts of yourself that you’ve forgotten?
Labyrinth is a time-slip novel. There are two different periods live on the page – one is 1209 to 1244, one is 2005. In the medieval period, there’s a scene with the main character where her father is dying. It was very weird reading that, because since writing that, my father has died, and indeed, my mother has died. I had never sat at a bedside at the end of somebody’s life before, and now I’ve done it several times. It was very odd reading back and thinking, that’s how imagination works, because that actually is what it felt like. Again, that’s the power of books.
There’s so much texture in your books. There are smells, sounds. The material world feels very vivid. Is that just hours and hours of research?
Try years of research. I write imagined characters against the backdrop of real history. My job is to create Carcassonne in 1209, the beginning of Cape Town and Stellenbosch in 1688, so that anybody reading it feels as though they’re there. They can smell it, they can feel the sand under their feet, they can imagine the feel of the hot winds on their face. The majority of the time I spend on any novel is research. When I write, I’m a sprinter.
Are you hearing any of your ‘whispers in the landscape’ right now that you can hint at?
I walk a lot outside in the countryside. I never listen to music or podcasts or talk to people on the phone. When I’m outside in the hills or the marshes locally or in the mountains outside Carcassonne, I’m always silent because in order for your imagination to work, you need to give it silence and space and peace.
You very much have a mission of giving voices, especially to women, that would not be reflected in the historical record. Do you ever get a sense of the weight of speaking words they may never have had the opportunity to?
All of my work is about centring women’s voices. It is not about taking gorgeous, lovely men out. It is about telling the whole story, because for too long history has only been a partial story about a certain sort of male person, often high-born. But women, all the other types of people, were always also there too.
My stories and my non-fiction are about shining a spotlight on the other half of history, and putting women back where they always were. It’s not about making stuff up. Certainly with The Map of Bones, that is at the heart of the novel. It is about women bearing witness to other women’s stories. That is at the heart of everything I do – and it is regretfully, even more important now than it was five, 10, 20 years ago. Women’s voices being heard and respected on an equal basis is something that we all need to make sure happens.
