Interview | History is 'mostly artifice. It has to be': Rebecca Perry, author of Booker-shortlisted 'May We Feed the King'

How much of history is curation, and can the past ever be fully known, asks Perry with her novel

"Teasing out life in a dead space, though possible, is akin to making an animal from a folded paper napkin."

There is something deceptive about mistaking a folded napkin for an animal. And yet, in a world inundated by 'constructed realities' for social media, the greater challenge may be holding on to the capacity to believe. London-based poet Rebecca Perry, the only debut novelist on this year's Booker Prize shortlist, compels us to do that with May We Feed the King (Granta Books). A genre-bending novel that Perry initially imagined as a "long poem", even before writing a word of it, the book brings together an unlikely pair: a modern-day curator intent on recreating historical banquets through painstakingly sourced replica food, and a reluctant king who is watched at all hours of the day, powerless despite his position at the apex of a medieval kingdom.

Perry creates a plot, and still inscribes gaps between what is seen and what is believed, what is staged and what is real. Here, the art of creation and curation, the limits of historical fiction, and the curious possibilities of making life out of a dead space come into view. Edited excerpts from a conversation n interviewwith the author: Between the curator's meticulous artifice and the king's reluctant presence, Perry asks how much of history is curation, and whether the past can ever be fully known or only [] believed. Perhaps this is how the novel's poetic premise comes into play: Perry creates a plot, yet inscribes gaps between what is seen and what is believed, what is staged and what is real.

Here, the art of creation and curation, the limits of historical fiction, and the curious possibilities of making life out of a dead space come into view. Excerpts from an edited interview with Perry. How does it feel to write a book about artifice, and now that it is on the Booker shortlist,and have that piece of artifice change your reality?

I wanted the book to be upfront about the artifice of writing and examine how we piece together history. Now, experiencing the artifice around a prize, everything feels curated, and people's responses are fascinating. Ever since the Booker announcement, it has felt like a big performance.

I wrote this book without a publisher or any idea if it would ever be published. Coming from poetry, where not that many people read your work, writing felt private and intimate. After its release, things were fairly calm. I enjoyed it being a weird little book that booksellers recommended and people occasionally heard about. Then everything changed within a week. I'm grateful I had that experience, which I think most debut novelists have: writing and seeing what happens without knowing what's waiting around the corner.

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When our minds are elsewhere or occupied with grief or terror, how that manifests in the body is interesting to me. How extremes of emotion sit in the body and make you not want to sustain it. Neither the king nor the curator is thinking, "I'm intentionally not eating" or "I'm starving myself". For the curator, as she moves toward the replica, she moves away from real food. For the king, the closer he is forced to the real thing and the absurd abundance of food available to him, the more he pulls away. I wanted food to run parallel to the characters, mirroring their desires and their ability to engage or not, like a tide in and out.

Also, in the medieval section, I wanted access to food and bodily sustenance to be linked to class: who has access and who gets the leftovers.

You wrote this book in the bath with snacks and your cat Patsy. How did those material conditions help you in creating the mind space for this unusual book?

It is one of my favourite physical states to be in. I like how it contains you. You can't get up and walk away every five minutes, which I would do if I was sitting at a desk. It was a practical decision to stay in one place for two hours and focus. Being in the bath, with a lovely setup and my cat, was very calming. I'd look out over my garden and think about being in this space where you're in the air, you're in the real world, and then your body is also in the water, distorted and existing in a different state.

I wanted the middle section to feel like being underwater, as in complete immersion. You can still see above the surface, but you're still very much in it. That played into feelings of two worlds touching each other, but separated by something like the line of water. And I was by the windows, looking outside, so very connected to the outside, but inside. All of that interest in liminal space and things existing side by side, but being completely separate from each other is what I owe to the bath. Review | 'The End of Everything' by M. John Harrison: the aliens are here Review | 'The End of Everything' by M. John Harrison: the aliens are here Fantasy-fiction doyen Harrison taps into the chaos of the present, not to arrive at some final truth but to turn our gaze inwards 2026 Booker Prize-Shortlisted Review | 'The End of Everything' by M. John Harrison: the aliens are here storyline

On the spectrum of artifice and reality, where would you place history?

Oh, that's a very big question. I think of history as an incredibly sparse scaffold, mainly consisting of dates. And then basically everything else around that is where all the actual stuff happens, which we have no way of knowing, but we receive it as true. Someone probably wrote or recorded it, and people have perpetuated it over the years. Everything else is completely unknowable. We just create it. It's surely mostly artifice. It has to be.

How did you go about researching the book that reads like history but doesn't even share the characters' names?

I didn't do research in a traditional sense. I thought about two things a lot. One was that realisation you have when you're quite young at school, when they give you two accounts of the same event written by two different people. And you realise everybody has an agenda, and everyone is telling their story for a reason. And you can't really trust any of it. I also remember being taught a classic: a few lessons on the British Empire. I remember one map of the world on the left with all the territories we owned, and another on the right with fewer territories, but later. It was taught as a golden era versus our 'downfall'.

Even then, I thought this was the greatest spin. Looking back now, I can't quite believe that was casually taught with no context or accountability.

But I didn't read about any kings because I didn't want to be influenced. What I read were records of recipes and stock-takes from medieval kitchens -- stuff that would be hard to imagine as propaganda. I also visited different historic buildings and stood in rooms that were staged to figure out what it was like to work there.

Is that why you have withheld naming places and characters? And was it difficult to think about keeping someone immersed in the read with such scant detail, while still giving them space to navigate the gaps on their own? I like reading things where I'm being asked to participate, and I wanted to write something that felt like a collaboration. But I was also aware that many readers felt disconnected from the world of the book and the characters. That feels fine to me because the book cares about the idea of artifice, and so it had to not allow you to fully forget you were reading a book or that you were being asked to fulfil your role as a reader.

Both these characters -- the curator wants complete immersion in a different world to escape the one she's living in, and the king is so fully immersed in his that he can't wriggle out of it. This is why the reader couldn't have it too. In the first draft, there was even less detail. My editor was like, "For characters, we need one more sentence here or in another place, just to get a better understanding of what's happened." But he never tried to make me place it anywhere or name anyone. Everyone involved knew that wasn't an option. It was definitely risky, but I'd rather do that. View this post on Instagram

And yet,

The novel mirrors the anxieties of our times: history being politicised, our lives constantly contrived to look a certain way for social media, and then feeling a gaze that seems to have detached us from our place in the world. Did that strike you as you were writing?

It's hard for me to remember exactly when my preoccupations of the book presented themselves. With the curator, I wanted to explore storytelling, the reliability/unreliability of historical narratives, and what we've been told. I was also thinking about imagination, loneliness and devotion.

With the King, I knew he'd be incredibly reluctant and a pacifist. But as I was writing the book, I realised the two stories existed together. One day, my whole feed was full of awful things that Netanyahu and Trump and Putin were doing. And the King was written in the shadows of such awful, totalitarian leaders. I probably had an idea of a novel existing in this pure way in my brain, but that isn't true at all. The world started to seep into it. I think it's impossible to imagine anyone writing a book about somebody who is watched all the time without thinking about those things.

The interviewer is an independent journalist with bylines in Indian and international publications.

How does it feel to write a book about artifice, and now that it is on the Booker shortlist,and have that piece of artifice change your reality? I wanted the book to be upfront about the artifice of writing and examine how we piece together history. Now, experiencing the artifice around a prize, everything feels curated, and people's responses are fascinating. Ever since the Booker announcement, it has felt like a big performance. I wrote this book without a publisher or any idea if it would ever be published. Coming from poetry, where not that many people read your work, writing felt private and intimate.

After its release, things were fairly calm. I enjoyed it being a weird little book that booksellers recommended and people occasionally heard about. Then everything changed within a week. I'm grateful I had that experience, which I think most debut novelists have: writing and seeing what happens without knowing what's waiting around the corner. You wrote this book in the bath with snacks and your cat Patsy. How did those material conditions help you in creating the mind space for this unusual book? It is one of my favourite physical states to be in. I like how it contains you. You can't get up and walk away every five minutes, which I would do if I was sitting at a desk.

It was a practical decision to stay in one place for two hours and focus. Being in the bath, with a lovely setup and my cat, was very calming. I'd look out over my garden and think about being in this space where you're in the air, you're in the real world, and then your body is also in the water, distorted and existing in a different state. On the spectrum of artifice and reality, where would you place history? Oh, that's a very big question. I think of history as an incredibly sparse scaffold, mainly consisting of dates. And then basically everything else around that is where all the actual stuff happens, which we have no way of knowing, but we receive it as true.

Someone probably wrote or recorded it, and people have perpetuated it over the years. Everything else is completely unknowable. We just create it. It's surely mostly artifice. It has to be. How did you go about researching the book that reads like history but doesn't even share the characters' names? I didn't do research in a traditional sense. I thought about two things a lot. One was that realisation you have when you're quite young at school, when they give you two accounts of the same event written by two different people. And you realise everybody has an agenda, and everyone is telling their story for a reason.

And you can't really trust any of it. I also remember being taught a classic: a few lessons on the British Empire. I remember one map of the world on the left with all the territories we owned, and another on the right with fewer territories, but later. It was taught as a golden era versus our 'downfall'. Even then, I thought this was the greatest spin. Looking back now, I can't quite believe that was casually taught with no context or accountability. But I didn't read about any kings because I didn't want to be influenced. What I read were records of recipes and stock-takes from medieval kitchens -- stuff that would be hard to imagine as propaganda.

I also visited different historic buildings and stood in rooms that were staged to figure out what it was like to work there. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Booker Prizes (@thebookerprizes) And yet,The novel mirrors the anxieties of our times: history being politicised, our lives constantly contrived to look a certain way for social media, and then feeling a gaze that seems to have detached us from our place in the world. Did that strike you as you were writing? It's hard for me to remember exactly when my preoccupations of the book presented themselves. With the curator, I wanted to explore storytelling, the reliability/unreliability of historical narratives, and what we've been told.

I was also thinking about imagination, loneliness and devotion. With the King, I knew he'd be incredibly reluctant and a pacifist. But as I was writing the book, I realised the two stories existed together. One day, my whole feed was full of awful things that Netanyahu and Trump and Putin were doing. And the King was written in the shadows of such awful, totalitarian leaders. I probably had an idea of a novel existing in this pure way in my brain, but that isn't true at all. The world started to seep into it. I think it's impossible to imagine anyone writing a book about somebody who is watched all the time without thinking about those things.