By Yeow Kai Chai

Fiction/drama writer and critic Peter Nazareth said in a 2011 interview: "If I have to write in one category, I'll make sure to bring in something from somewhere else."

Unsurprisingly, hybridisation is in his blood. He was born in Kampala, Uganda – his father was from Goa, India; his mother from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and his maternal grandfather was a professional classical musician.

He was educated at Makerere University in Uganda and at the University of Leeds in Britain. He was senior finance officer in the Uganda government before he left in January 1973 to accept the Seymour Lustman Fellowship at Yale University.

His debut novel, In a Brown Mantle (1972), had prophesised the expulsion of Asians, and Idi Amin announced it just nine days after the book launch in Kampala.

Currently, he is Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where he also acts as Advisor to the International Writing Program.

Nazareth attracted substantial media attention in 1992 when he started teaching a class called Elvis as Anthology, which postulates the iconic singer as a cultural sponge who soaks up myriad influences. Publisher Goa 1556 will soon release his e-book called Elvis: Rewriting the World Through Multicultural Movies.

1. What are you reading right now?
The new edition of my novel, The General is Up (2013) and Simon Tay's The City of Small Blessings (2009), because I am teaching them in my class, Selected Novels by Writers of the International Writing Program.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play, or poem, who would you be, and why?
The character Uncle Robin in Ishmael Reed's 1976 novel Flight to Canada because he knows how to play the Trickster and overcome the master figure to gain his freedom. But I would combine him with the younger Raven Quickskill, who is a poet and who learns to be a Trickster by telling the story of Uncle Robin.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
That because I was born a Goan I have to be a Goan writer or an Asian writer exclusively. I am an African writer of Goan, Malaysian (because my mother was born in KL) and Indian origin, and can write on whatever interests me.

4. Name one living author and one dead author you identify with most, and tell us why.
Ishmael Reed. He is an African American who also has Cherokee (American Indian) and Irish ancestry. He undermines fabricated history and gives us the truth of what is going on with a great sense of humour that is empowering.

Joseph Conrad. He was Polish but became an English classic. He wrote about the truth of colonialism and neo-colonialism in many parts of the world. He used strategies to deceive the supporters of western imperialism and get his work published. He demonstrates how power works.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes. I do other things. I read things which aren't strictly literature. I feed my subconscious. And then the dam opens and the writing pours out.

6. What qualities do you admire most in a writer?
The ability to pursue one's writing and not get side-tracked.

7. What is one trait you deplore most in writing or writers?
Writers who see writing as a way of becoming famous and making money, and not as a gift to receive and to give.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o'clock news, the mumbling of wild men saddled by demons."

This is what the Loop Garoo Kid says to Bo Shmo and his neo-social realist gang in Ishmael Reed's Wild West novel, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down.

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
…admire and like Cliff Richard. Born Harry Webb in India, he recreated himself in England, taking his names from Heathcliff, the dark outsider in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Little Richard, the great rock 'n' roller.

He sings songs with social meanings: 'The Joy of Living' (about the destruction of ecology by malls); 'Cities May Fall' (Kafka-esque dangers to humanity); 'Big Ship' and 'Everyman' (metaphysics); and 'My Kind of Life' (about pursuing one's dharma). He is prolific and versatile and keeps growing, constantly changing the styles of his big hits whenever he sings them.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
I would pick a comedy. The kind of comedy Elvis did in the movie Follow That Dream. He plays a working-class person that everybody thinks is dumb and yet he always wins out against the powerful bureaucracy and the higher classes. He is a Trickster. Laughter is powerful against dictators.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
My least favourite is "hegemonic". Literary scholars use it a lot. It is an ugly word that does not explain much though it pretends to.

My favourite word is "Yeah!"

12. Write a short-short story in three lines that include the following three characters: Elvis, clarinet player, Mary.
Peter wooed Mary and made her his wife by playing 'Petite Fleur' on the clarinet at her birthday 50 years ago. He had considered singing a song by Elvis but decided against it because she would have rejected his proposal for being off-key. He was successful because he was not the singer but the clarinet player.

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
I used to write with the pen, then I learned to use the typewriter, then the desktop computer and now the laptop. So right now the laptop is indispensable. More generally, I love to listen to music while I write.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
Any time the spirit hits me, day or night.

15. If you had a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Ngugi wa Thiong'o from Kenya. He is a profound and humorous novelist. We are also great friends.

Sasenarine Persaud, who is originally from Guyana. He has pursued his vision as a poet writing in the tradition of Yogic Realism. He creates poetry which has a basis in Hinduism and yet is multi-national and multicultural.

Jameela Siddiqi, from Uganda. She wrote The Feast of the Nine Virgins, a novel based on the expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin. It's full of music and movies and great humour.

16. You have been an astute observer of Singapore literature for decades. Which Singapore books and/or authors have impressed you, and why? And what advice would you give to aspiring Singapore writers?
Suchen Christine Lim. Two of her novels are great: Fistful of Colours and The River's Song. They deal with history and seek to change it. They have roots in Chinese culture yet are multicultural. They also draw meaning from other art forms: namely, painting and sculpture in Fistful and music in River's Song.

Edwin Thumboo's poem, 'Ulysses By the Merlion'. He uses his western education to appropriate a made-up creature and convert it into a myth that begins to unify a diverse people into a nation. Even when critics reject the Merlion, they keep referring to the poem.

Simon Tay's non-fiction book, Alien Asian, in which Tay references the American classic Walden by Thoreau, looking at America from a Singaporean's perspective.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
Read my works.

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