There's an excellent interview of Christopher Kremmer, author of Inhaling the Mahatma, on Chandrahas' blog The Middle Stage. Here is an excerpt of some of Kremmer's thoughts on narrative non-fiction:
"It [narrative non-fiction] is a very post-modern form, and the writer needs to be open to the multi-faceted nature of truth. A building might look beautiful from outside, but at the back it could be a garbage heap. Look at people and things from different angles. Another thing is that you have to be prepared to reveal who you are. These are not objective books, in the traditional sense, so we need to know who is this person who is taking us through northern Afghanistan, or northern India. What’s their background? Why should be trust them? Because the books sometimes don’t have a strictly defined plot, the voice of the narrator is very important in holding it all together and making the reader turn the page. And characters. Don’t forget the absolute necessity for bringing people alive on the page. There has never been a good book that lacked humanity."
"It [narrative non-fiction] is a very post-modern form, and the writer needs to be open to the multi-faceted nature of truth. A building might look beautiful from outside, but at the back it could be a garbage heap. Look at people and things from different angles. Another thing is that you have to be prepared to reveal who you are. These are not objective books, in the traditional sense, so we need to know who is this person who is taking us through northern Afghanistan, or northern India. What’s their background? Why should be trust them? Because the books sometimes don’t have a strictly defined plot, the voice of the narrator is very important in holding it all together and making the reader turn the page. And characters. Don’t forget the absolute necessity for bringing people alive on the page. There has never been a good book that lacked humanity."
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