"It's just not an episode of my life that I often think about these days, as it was so traumatic," the crime novelist Simon Kernick says, sighing heavily. "For years, I blanked it out almost completely and never spoke about it."
We've touched upon a nightmarish episode from Kernick's teenage years, an encounter that the young Kernick wasn't sure he was going to survive.
But, as Kernick admits himself, if ever the oft-quoted dictum "write about what you know" was apposite for writers, then it is doubly so for him.
Because Kernick, whose books are as scary and violent as they are gripping and difficult to put down, doesn't only talk the talk. This is a man who has walked the walk, too.
His breakthrough novel in 2006, Relentless, a staple of UK television's Richard and Judy Book Club, was inspired by horrific events that happened in July 1983, when Kernick was a 16-year-old, hitch-hiking with two friends.
Kernick, now 45, takes up the story: "A car, in a seemingly endless stream of cars, sped past us but suddenly braked a hundred yards or so up the road. It then reversed really quickly. I think then we should have smelled a rat but we were 16 and desperate for a lift so we squashed into a really old Ford Escort with these three older guys."
Kernick pauses for a moment, then continues: "It was only a short journey to town, and the conversation was friendly as we all made small talk. And then it happened. The car stopped on a quiet stretch of the road and the man in the front passenger seat said, 'All right, lads, empty your pockets.' He said it so calmly, in such a matter-of-fact way, that I was still wondering if I'd heard him right when the driver leaned over his seat and punched me twice in the face.
"Then they all started punching us. We were helpless as they beat us into submission. Then the car pulled away, the man in the front seat once again telling us to empty our pockets. We did what we were told, but we hardly had anything - a few quid in change, some cigarettes - and it certainly wasn't enough for our attackers. So they told us to take our clothes off."
Kernick stops again. It's clearly a painful memory.
"Even now I can remember how terrified I was. We began to undress slowly as two of the attackers watched us. They even made us take off our underwear. Then the car turned off the main road and headed down a track into woodland. They made us get out and herded us, naked and terrified, before lining us up in a row. 'Let's do 'em,' said the front-seat passenger. 'I'll get the shotgun,' replied the driver, going back to the car and reaching under the seat. I really thought that this was it. "My life really did flash before me, too. I thought of all the things I wished I could have done and the places I could have seen. I was going to die. But then one of my friends made a break for it, and disappeared into the woods and the attackers just suddenly seemed to lose interest and let us all run off.
"Looking back now, it was just a nasty game for them. There was never a shotgun - they were just bullies. Didn't make any difference at the time, though - it was terrifying. The police even knew who they were but they couldn't press charges as it was our word against theirs and the car was never found."
Today, Kernick is not a man given to melancholic introspection. He's good company: funny, chatty and with a noticeable lack of ego, something not always apparent with best-selling authors.
Perhaps this absence of self-regard is due to Kernick's long struggle for success. He really has paid his dues.
"I always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was a very young kid," he says, "and so I was writing short stories - rubbish short stories - at six or seven and I just developed that."
So Kernick must have been a star English pupil at school.
He laughs. "No, I certainly never did that well at English in school. I left with an 'E' grade A-Level - and that was at my second attempt! I went back to college and when I was finally back out in the working world in my mid-twenties, I realised I desperately wanted to be a writer. So I wrote my first crime book in my late twenties."
Unfortunately, that book and its successor, A Fine Night for Dying ("bloody awful" is Kernick's evaluation of that now), attracted no interest at all, the latter being rejected by more than 200 agents and publishers. But still Kernick did not give up and, finally, in 2001 when his third attempt, The Business of Dying, was picked up by the publisher Transworld, he was finally able to give up his day job as a software salesman.
Now he's one of the UK's most successful authors. His last novel, The Payback, went straight to number one in the bestsellers' chart, and his 11th book Siege, a hugely ambitious thriller focusing on international terrorism, right-wing extremism and a bloody hotel siege in London, is almost certainly destined to build further on Kernick's global reputation. But he's worked his socks off for all this and displayed extraordinary tenacity. Did he ever feel like giving up in the late 1990s, when he was receiving rejection letter after rejection letter?
"Occasionally," he admits. "But I would still have written. It's what I love to do. I imagine it's what I'll always love to do."
He's come a long way from being that terrified lad in the forest.
Siege (Transworld) is out in bookstores on Wednesday. For more info, visit www.simonkernick.com
artslife@thenational.ae
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AT4 Ultimate, as tested
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Brief scores:
Everton 0
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Vardy 58'
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
Banned items
Dubai Police has also issued a list of banned items at the ground on Sunday. These include:
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Political flags or banners
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Bikes, skateboards or scooters
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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