I’m not English. So how did I write a book in English, about the English?

Francois Viljoen — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You see, depending on your point of view, English may be a Language first and foremost. People who speak it in other countries may very well associate the word with how they speak. You may hear people say, ‘I am English.’ When they actually mean they are an English peaking South African for example. Someone in the Congo may refer to themselves as being French.

Other people in different countries, may use the word in the sense of someone being from England. ‘The English.’ But for people living in England, being English has a far richer and deeper meeting. It is their essence. Their culture. Everything that makes them the nation that they are.

So, although with a weird accent, I consider myself as someone being able to speak the language. And I also live in England. But does that make me English? I don’t really think so. My kids are definitely, maybe English, but for me, my African roots run too deep.

Let’s then deal with the geography first: I was born in Johannesburg. Because of the historic ties with England, much of the richness of English culture is still rooted in South African culture. I grew up with that influence around me, but in the UK, there was always enough of a difference to be noticed, and definitely enough to take someone by surprise. So, having lived in England for fourteen years, I think I have given myself time to learn at least what some of the differences are. Figuring out why, well, that is another matter, you see. Most people do not know why things are the way they are – certain cultural characteristics are just there.

But this outside-in view, I believe, has helped me describe things better. Maybe I look at a street in London slightly differently, or I notice small behaviours and mannerisms that someone else might pass over. And in doing so, I hope I also describe things slightly differently in my book.

Then, on to the matter of language. People who are not multilingual often miss the point that people have a thinking language and a speaking language. For me, thoughts still arrive in my head in Afrikaans. That has never really left me. So, even when I speak English, I have to pay really close attention to the words and their order. You see, the same sentence in these two languages often has different word orders.

Is this, then, a disability when writing?

Definitely not. I just work very hard at every sentence. And in doing so, I think nothing escapes the words on the page.

See, I don’t have implicit language mistakes when I write. Someone in the UK may say something in a way that seems natural, but actually, it contains a small grammatical error, or they use the wrong word for something. But because they have spoken like that all their lives, they don’t really spot those nuances anymore. I think all writers have to work carefully on the way they construct it all. You can have a brilliant book, but if there is one sentence or paragraph that trips people over, they hardly ever get up again. They close the book and move on.

There are many dimensions that shape the actual language we use. The most commonly known is probably the geographic localisation of languages and dialects. Accents give us an identity. They allow us to be placed, sometimes before we wish to be placed. They put us into areas. Boxes if you will. But there is also a definite language divide across many different dimensions. Take level of education, for example. Or the industry people work in. Their level of self-confidence, I have learnt, is also a massive driver in how we speak.

This means one has to pay careful attention when developing characters. Two people in the same city may use slightly different word choices and say things differently because of many factors. And characters evolve over time. In Parallel Recollections, many of the characters grow older. They gain more experience in what they do. But they also start caring less about unimportant things.

Now, if used correctly, this is a very powerful writing tool. You can show the reader where someone is from and how well they are educated. You can let the reader decode how confident a character is – without telling them any of it. You just structure the language slightly differently.

So then, how did I do all of this? Two main things: I used the ‘Read Aloud’ function in Word. I close my eyes, so I do not see the words on the page, and I listen to my own story. It is a strange little test, but it works for me. As long as my mind can dwell in the emotions, or in a scene, I know things are mostly okay. But the minute I have to break out of my thoughts, and think about what I am hearing, I stop and fix it.

And I do this multiple times over. I also read the story out loud. Small errors on paper become much larger in the air.

So yes, I think fourteen years gave me enough time to observe, but I still retain a different worldview, and that gives me a different perspective. And as for language – that is probably why I can only do shorter novels for now. Otherwise, knowing me, the first part of a book may very well be out of fashion by the time I finish it.

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The big promises

Francois Viljoen — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It has been one month since Parallel Recollections first appeared. When I published it, I knew writing the book had been hard. What I did not yet know was that finishing it was only the first step. I had reached the point where every further edit seemed to make it worse, so I took the plunge and put it on Amazon as a self-published work.

There's a saying: before you can enjoy the view, you have to climb the mountain. Well, let me tell you, boy, when you try to launch your own book, that saying is nonsense. First, you have to build the mountain with your bare hands. Then you can climb it. And only then, if the weather holds and you have not fallen off the edge, might there be some kind of view to enjoy.

So when I set out on this project, I made myself a few firm promises about the kind of story I refused to write:

I would not follow a standard plot. We all know that story: a body is found, and we spend the rest of the book trying to guess who the killer is. If we are lucky, there is a deeper story underneath that keeps us mildly entertained. But that road has been walked too many times.

I also wanted to avoid the familiar “boy meets girl, they suffer beautifully, and they live happily ever after” story. C’mon, people. Surely, we can do something different. I think readers are tired of the norm.

The comfortable beginning, middle, and end narrative is also nowhere to be seen. There is no neat, layered pyramid here, and none of the usual storyline machinery is quietly doing the heavy lifting.

So what did I build instead?

The narrative of Parallel Recollections had been living in my head for a long time. On my second attempt at turning it into a book, I made sure the story centred on one bold event — something significant, unsettling, and unlike anything I had seen done before.

That event gave me a way into the questions that sit underneath so many of our choices. What is right, and what is wrong? How do we decide when we do not have all the knowledge? And what do we become when the answer is not obvious?

Since then, I have worked hard. For a month, my evenings and weekends have gone into getting this book into as many hands as I could. I approached bookstores and libraries. I bought copies and gave them away for free. I made mistakes, plenty of them, but thirty days in, I am beginning to see a flicker of light.

And that flicker matters, because every person I know who has read the book keeps telling me the same thing: the plot surprises them, the ending stays with them, and the story reads the way I hoped it would.

It would appear, then, that although I am still only three shovels into building my mountain, the old saying may have had a point after all:

Build it, and you may get lucky. Build it well, and they will come.

In my next blog post, I am going to unpack something else that might surprise you: how someone who is not English, either in language or origin, managed to write a novel in English, set in England, and still make it feel true.

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Francois Viljoen | Updates

I’m not English. So how did I write a book in English, about the English?

The big promises