An Interview with Sarah Brooks

What inspired you to create the intricate world of The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands?

The novel was inspired by a journey on the real Trans-Siberian Express when I was a student studying Chinese in Beijing and decided to return home to the UK overland. It was an amazing experience, and the vivid memories provided the spark for the story. Although the real Trans-Siberian Express has an extraordinary history, I wanted to play with the atmosphere and strangeness of the long journey. As I wrote, I thought about the landscape rolling past the windows while on a train, and how you can catch a glimpse of something strange, but it’s gone as quickly as it appears.

Having studied Chinese and researched Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, did any of those eerie folktales influence the mythos or atmosphere of The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands?

Yes, definitely! I love Pu Songling’s seventeenth-century tales of ghosts, animal spirits, and other strange phenomena. I particularly like how they play with the connections between the human and the wondrous. Many tales concern a human man and a supernatural woman—often a ghost or a fox spirit—who either helps him or needs his help. I wanted to play with this but focus on friendship instead of romance while making the non-human character more ambiguous. I was keen that she should have her own agency rather than serving the protagonist’s arc.

The novel explores themes of empire, capitalism, and environmental decay. What drew you to weave these ideas into a steampunk-inspired narrative, and what message do you hope readers take away from it?

I think it’s almost impossible to write today without feeling the weight of the ecological stakes. I didn’t want to spell out exactly what had happened to the landscape to transform it into “the Wastelands,” but the “Cautious Traveller’s Guide” points to the land being exploited and fought over. Like many people, I spend a lot of time feeling furious about the greed and arrogance of corporations and governments. One of the inspirations for the Trans-Siberia Company was organizations like the East India Company, who were hugely powerful and exploitative, of both places and people. I wanted to create divides between the people who work on the train and respect the landscape, and the people who only see profit and who don’t reflect on the damage they’re doing.

I hope readers take away the message that it’s possible to change our relationship with the natural world. I work at a university and see how engaged my students are with the climate and with other current events. They’re not willing to be quiet about their worries for the future, and I completely support that attitude, so I do feel a sense of hope, and want readers to feel that too.

What inspired Zhang Wei Wei, and what role do they play in confronting the mysteries of the Wastelands?

I wanted each main character to have a different relationship with the train and the Wastelands. Weiwei is the “child of the train”—born on the train and adopted by the crew. She’s always seen the train as her home and trusted it to protect her from the dangers outside. But as the novel begins, she starts to question her loyalties. When she encounters a strange stowaway, they become unlikely friends, and her understanding of the train and the world beyond it begins to shift.

How did you balance the many genres to create a cohesive narrative without overwhelming the reader?

While I was writing the novel I didn’t think about writing in a specific genre—I wrote the kind of story I wanted to read. Trying to balance the historical and the fantastical was tricky at times. I wanted the story to feel grounded in “real” history but also have the freedom to take it in fantastical directions. The first few drafts didn’t really have a cohesive narrative at all! It was only in the editing that a story that made sense began to form.

What strategies do you use to create stories that feel fresh and original, especially in genres that often rely on familiar tropes?

Tropes can be useful, but it’s how you deal with them that matters. This book involves a woman searching for the truth about her father, a young orphan working out her place in the world, a self-absorbed scientist, and a greedy corporation. All of these are familiar elements of many plots, but what makes them feel original is the specifics of the setting, their relationship to the train, to each other, and their personal histories and perspectives.

As a teacher of East-Asian Studies and deputy director of the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, how does your academic background inform your fiction writing?

In my day job, I must carefully reference and justify everything, so being able to make things up is a joy! Writing historical fantasy lets me indulge my enjoyment of research while being able to follow my imagination. I read brilliant books about the real Trans- Siberian Express, then picked out key ideas to use. Working at a university provides all sorts of inspiration—not only through books but also the various characters you meet on a day-to-day basis. I’m lucky to have a job that involves teaching and research in addition to organizing events and meeting with writers and translators who share their ideas and processes.

How did writing communities shape your approach to storytelling and world- building?

I joined a local creative writing group after coming back to the UK for my PhD. My tutor introduced me to the Leeds Writers’ Circle, which has always been incredibly supportive. Listening to other people’s work and feedback has taught me a huge amount about writing.

In 2012, I went to the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in Seattle, which is basically a boot camp for writing. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands was born at this workshop. Having to produce a short story every week helped turn off the critical voices and get words down on the page.

Could you share how you got started as a writer, and what advice you’d offer to emerging writers?

As a book-obsessed child, I decided early on I wanted to be a writer. I spent my teenage years writing the kind of stories I loved reading—adventurous, plucky orphans, magical realms, and talking animals. After university, I spent most of my twenties teaching English as a foreign language abroad, which gave me enough real-life adventures to keep feeding the urge to explore the world in writing. I spent a long time writing for pleasure, not thinking about trying to get the novel published. I’m grateful for the time spent slowly writing and thinking about the novel, without any pressure or expectations. My biggest piece of advice would be to ignore that horrible little voice questioning whether your work is any good. So much of publishing a book is trying to focus on the writing and enjoyment of your story regardless of the noise and anxiety and other writers to compare yourself to. Finding a writing community to help you navigate this is vital—not only to help you with the writing itself, but with the ups and downs of the publishing industry.