Hari Kunzru 'Privacy is under attack in a whole host of ways'
over 5 years in The guardian
The novelist on creative spaces, the pernicious spread of surveillance and the power of protest
Hari Kunzru is the prizewinning author whose novels include The Impressionist and White Tears. His latest, Red Pill, is the unsettling tale of an American at a Berlin writer’s retreat. It uses the totalitarian past to shine a light on contemporary technologies of control, all wrapped within a sophisticated, fast-paced thriller. Kunzru lives in New York with his wife, the novelist Katie Kitamura, and their two young children.
The seemingly benevolent Deuter Centre denies your protagonist the one thing he needs in order to work – a private space. How important is privacy to art?I had gone to Germany in the first half of 2016 with a set of questions around privacy and the self. Privacy is under attack in a whole host of ways and surveillance is one of them. I’m really interested in the ways you behave when you think it’s possible you’re being observed. There’s this idea in Hannah Arendt that you need privacy and a space that’s hidden away from the public in order to have the choice when to give yourself to the public space. If you have no ability to withdraw then there’s something essential to being a person that is lost. Continue reading...
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