Tim Winton interview: ‘The world isn’t always what you think it is’

It’s 30 years since The Riders was published in the UK and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. How did that nomination feel back then, and what impact do you think it’s had on your writing career?  

Well, the book had already been a bestseller in Australia, so it didn’t have a huge impact here at home, but it was certainly useful in the UK. The name recognition of the Booker is second to none in the literary world. So, it definitely helped the book get a little more prominence and it helped sales for a few weeks, that’s for sure. 

Do you feel distant from the characters now or do they still feel familiar or close? How have your feelings about Scully, Billie and Jennifer changed over the intervening three decades?  

Yes, they still feel very familiar, like family. I guess my feelings about them have remained pretty constant. They’re family – what are you gonna do? 

It’s recently been reported that Edward Berger is going to direct a film adaptation of the novel, starring Brad Pitt. How do you feel about this and are you involved in any way?  

The book has had a long screen life without ever making it to the screen, so this news is exciting. Adaptations are a bit of a punt – there’s no telling how they’ll work out – but I’m pretty confident in the team. I’m not slated to write the screenplay, but I will be an executive producer. I didn’t see the Brad Pitt casting coming, but I am intrigued by the possibilities it throws up. 

‘Nothing so weird as a man in love’ – Scully’s observation in the first chapter sets the scene, in a way, for everything to come, but if you had to sum up The Riders in a single sentence, what would it be?   

The world isn’t always what you think it is, and that includes the world of your family. 

What most inspired you to write – and the writing of – The Riders? And how did you choose the title?  

I lived in Europe for a couple of years and did a bit of travelling. I was interested in the way humans have domesticated time and space to the point of expecting certainty and predictability at every point. One day I was sitting at an airport watching people reunite rapturously, and I realised that these lovely meetings had been arranged in advance and scheduled, across vast distances and multiple time zones, down to the minute. One interruption to the schedule can cause real disruption, a couple more can pull the world down around your ears. We’ve come to expect certainty, and when we don’t get it, we want an explanation. If an explanation is not forthcoming it seems as if our whole existence is under threat. So, what happens if someone doesn’t get off the plane? And what if there’s no explanation? The title came from a story someone told me waking in the night to see lights on a beach. She thought of people riding with pitch torches – why, I don’t know, but it was the west of Ireland, so maybe these notions go deep. 

Most of your novels are set in Australia but The Riders isn’t – although Scully yearns for its blue water, white sand and ‘acetylene heat’. How and why did you choose the novel’s locations? 

Yes, some English and American readers seemed relieved that I was finally giving a story a proper setting!  No more weird animals and place names to get in the way (bless). In the 1980s I had lived in the gate lodge of Leap Castle in County Offaly, and before that, Paris. And I had lived on the Greek island of Hydra. Very happily, I should add. I had a fat time. So knowledge of those places was something I could draw on. I’d had the singular experience of travelling with a small child – with my wife and on my own – so that was also in the bank already, so to speak. I knew what it was like to try to hold a small family unit together in an alien environment. Also how every adverse human situation can be attenuated by being alone and away from home. And let’s face it, to an antipodean, everything in that other hemisphere feels upside down on a good day. 

You’re well known as an environmentalist as well as a writer. The Riders isn’t an environmental novel, but the natural world and natural forces are very present – the (terrible!) weather and landscapes of rural Ireland and mostly urban Europe are more than just background, they seem to feed Scully’s unravelling. Could you tell us how you use weather and landscapes to create specific feelings and atmospheres?   

I’m one of those simple folks whose mood is determined by weather – one of the few character traits I share with Scully. Yes, I’ve written a lot about the force of geography on people and the way it shapes human culture. Like every migrant, Scully struggles to read the places he’s in. He may be even worse at reading the people who are in them, which is also an experience migrants have to contend with. But he’s doing all this in extremis emotionally, and you soon get the sense he’s running on empty.