Virgin Radio
16 Jun 2024, 12:08
Anita Rani has written her debut novel, Baby Does A Runner, inspired by her own experiences as a British Asian woman.
The broadcaster joined Angela Scanlon on Virgin Radio UK this morning to talk about the novel and how her recent appearance on Who Do You Think You Are also inspired a part of the story.
“It’s a love story,” Anita explained.
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“It’s about a woman who’s trying to find her identity and it’s a complicated world she lives in. She’s in a job she doesn’t like. She’s 36, and she’s not got a partner, which is absolutely fine. Women can be single.
“However, she’s also a young Indian woman from Yorkshire and therein lies the problem because her entire world expects her to have settled down by now.”
To add to it all, Baby then finds love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not her grandmother, which sends her on a journey to India to discover who this mysterious woman is.
“A lot of the characters in there are familiar to me,” Anita said. “If I was going to write a character that’s authentic, that is absolutely a British experience, who’s a northern British Asian woman, then it has to be somebody I know.”
She added: “The people who’ve read it have just said, ‘Thank God, somebody has finally written a character that reflects who we are’.”
Baby’s journey to India is also something inspired by events in Anita’s own life, particularly her experience on Who Do You Think You Are, where she investigated the history of her maternal grandfather and his first wife and children.
For Anita, writing and travelling have been ways to reconnect with herself and clarify her goals in life.
“I’m just reflecting on who I am”, she said.
“I recognise that you can go through life thinking everything’s okay, and this is what I did, and focus on work and just go, ‘I’m fine because I really like who I am’. Then, just sort of pause for a minute and think, ‘But actually, what is going on with me?’.”
Baby Does A Runner by Anita Rani is out now.
