you know when you switch from historical fiction right I think that's a question in the beginning did you set out to write historical fiction or was it just I just had a character and there's a story and

well no it was more the story I wanted to talk about this period leading up to independence because I mean you'll know this as British people we don't really understand our history and you're younger than me but when I was growing up we didn't learn about colonial history we still don't You tell people that the largest volunteer army in history was the Indian Army in the Second World War, right? So two million Indians volunteered to fight for the British crown, right? If people in this country knew that, maybe their attitudes towards reform and restore and all these...

would change a wee bit, right? If you don't know your history, that's when you make stupid decisions, right? Yep.

That's when you think in black and white.

And so, as you do and I do, we sit between cultures, right? We understand from a very early age that there's another side to the story.

Yeah.

People in this country don't hear, right? And so I wanted to tell by other side, because it's important.

going to tell you all about it.

Murder

mystery information.

It is and it isn't.

It's locked tower block, shall we say.

Locked ultra-modern tower block.

Yes, it is.

It's very funny.

I didn't know anything about the short list.

What are the questions? Best holiday you've ever had will do first of all.

Right.

Well, it's sort of the best and sort of the worst as well.

So my wife and I went to Mauritius on honeymoon many, many years ago.

And we loved it so much that I then, on a whim... took a job with a company that had its headquarters in Mauritius.

I was based in London, but it meant we had a house on the beach in Mauritius and we were there for three or four months a year.

And it was only when we lived there that I realised that Living in a place is very different from a holiday.

So

So what's it like the first time you step foot in one of these places where there's, you know, it's very secure and it's uber discreet concierge and all that kind of stuff? I mean, I've not been, I'm gleaning this from your novel.

Well, it's a bit, you know, a lot of this has been learned from places like Dubai, right? So if you go to Dubai, it's like a self-enclosed mini Dubai where you go in, you go in through security, there will be, you know, they will check you, they'll check your car, right? But once you're in, it's like a self-contained little camelot.

So where my mum lives, for example, when she lives there, it's certainly nowhere near as glamorous as the pinnacle in the book.

But there are six towers.

Half of the people live there the whole year.

The rest of them come and go.

In our eyes, they're called non-resident Indians or not really Indian, as other people call them.

And your mum's there six months out of 12?

Yeah.

It also came from a true crime, um, story that I was researching.

I, I wrote a, a novella about a couple of years ago, and it's called The Nithari Murders, which took place just outside of Delhi.

Uh, and in the end it was, it was a, a very rich man and his, um, [smacks lips] illiterate manservant, um, were accused and, of, of murdering lots of kids.

Um, and it turned out that the, the rich businessman was out of town for about half of those.

Mm

... by, by Salman Rushdie, which, um, is about, uh, uh...

You know, it essentially looks at the lives of people who are born on the stroke of midnight when India became independent, and it really talks about identity and the legacy of, of the British in India because one of the things that I've sort of noticed over the years is that even though colonialism physically ended in India in, in, say, '47, um, I think there's such thing as colonialis- co- colonization of the mind-

So, Abeer, why don't you tell us a little bit about your new book, The Pinnacle? Well, that's

a great idea, Dawn.

Let me tell you a wee bit about my new book, which is called The Pinnacle.

And as Bob said, it is set in current-day Mumbai, and it features...

Think of an actor who is not, but quite similar to George Clooney, right? So it's George Abercrombie, slightly past his best.

So George's career, you know, it's like this.

He's not doing brilliantly now.

Why pick a fictional building?

So tell me about the, the title and what it's all about.

So my new one is called The Pinnacle, and it features washed-up American actor George Abercrombie, who marries Bollywood actress Sweetie Sahota, who's much younger than him and much more successful.

They move to Mumbai.

He hates it.

They're living in this luxury skyscraper called The Pinnacle, and then Sweetie is murdered, and George is the prime suspect.

And what do you do when 1.4 billion Indians want to kill you?

It was an extraordinary success for you.

Well, I was very lucky.