Published in Arts in the City, Issue 2, September 2006

Linda Jaivin has a delicious giggle. At times it seems like she’s struggling to keep it from taking over the conversation. Her sense of humour has been the one constant in a varied career for this translator, subtitler, historian, journalist, writer of erotic fiction and now, author of The Infernal Optimist, a novel set in an Australian detention centre. Jaivin uses humour to work her way into a serious subject, one she emersed herself in as a regular visitor to Villawood.

‘I thought, there’s so much importance in what’s happening and so much need to tell these stories,’ she says. ‘And yet, so much of it is so tragic and so terribly sad, I wasn’t sure how to go about finding the story that I could tell.’ After experimenting with various perspectives, she found the solution in main character Zeki. Born in Turkey but raised in Australia, Zeki finds himself scheduled for deportation after spending a month too long in prison. Jaivin says smart arse, apolitical Zeki provided the right tone for the novel. ‘I was trying to look at what was happening from the perspective of someone who is much closer to what you would call an ordinary Australian, and I thought that was a really easy way to get people to enter the story.’

Jaivin hopes the Melbourne Writers Festival will help her raise awareness of the realities of detention. The Infernal Optimist is out now.