Kaya Purchase

1 month ago | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Sophie Percival

Firstly, I want to congratulate you on the novel. It’s such an important piece of work in terms of how it grapples with ecological themes and the human experience. It feels like the most accurate representation of climate anxiety at this specific point in history that I’ve read. This is a novel about grief and confronting the truth of mortality, but the narrator’s personal experiences of grief serve as a microcosm for the collective grief we all feel right now for a collapsing planet.

Nov 22, 2024 | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Sophie Percival

One of the most powerful attributes of literature is that it offers a channel to amplify voices, narratives and perspectives that have otherwise been silenced, marginalised or ignored. Transnational corporations and international conglomerates have so much wealth and influence that they can alter their own narratives, forging documents, destroying evidence and sponsoring government leaders to support their version of events in order to erase any crimes they are responsible for.

Jun 20, 2024 | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Sophie Percival

Defne Suman’s Summer Heat is, as the title suggests, a sun-soaked novel made for dipping into between dips in the sea. It features all the typical elements of a beach read: scorched flagstones, salty skin, drowsy sunset dinners, an illicit affair (featuring plenty of salacious references to broad chests and muscular shoulders), and even an existential submergence in the ocean – can the protagonist surrender to the flow of life? Or will they drown, overwhelmed by their fate?

May 31, 2024 | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Sophie Percival

Cristina Henriquez’s The Great Divide features divisions of more than one sort. The titular division is the splitting of Panama along the Cordillera mountains in order to build the United States’ ‘Great Canal’ of 1907. Connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the canal was designed to place the US in control of shipping routes and, therefore, global trade.

May 22, 2024 | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Madeleine Knowles

What was it about Mary Queen of Scots’ story that drew you to her as a character? Firstly, I knew about Mary Queen of Scots’ long captivity in England, that’s well documented, but I hadn’t ever heard about this period of time when she was in captivity in Scotland at Loch Levan. It was such an action-packed period of her life and also, such an incredible setting – this island fortress in the middle of a Loch.