Novelist Jamaluddin Aram on leaving space for the reader to work

I think good writing is like a good joke. If you explain the joke, then it's not funny anymore, you know? And the same thing with writing: sometimes I read books and it's going so well, they're trying to do this thing, and then at the end they try to explain it.

And I'm like—no, you should've just left it there. Let the reader work.

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with writer and filmmaker Jamaluddin Aram, winner of the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary fiction for his novel Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday. It’s a tapestry of stories about different people—shopkeepers, tradespeople, doctors, children, and their parents—while in the background, often very deep in the background, a war is being fought.