Bryn Hammond

Writer, Australia, ex-UK.

I've been quietly at work on my historical fiction about 12th and 13th-century Mongols since 2003. It's my main occupation/obsession.

Before that, I spent years on a creative translation of Beowulf (unfinished) and wrote science fiction.

Keen on: walks by the sea, where I live. Baroque opera, Shostakovich, David Bowie. Books, old and a few new.

On Against Walls:

I am a great fan of the Secret History of the Mongols, our unique primary source for the life of Tchingis Khan, and my original for this novel. I follow in its footsteps, for it is a work of art as well as a work of history -- an epic and a biography. It has so much to tell us, if we have ears to hear. I try to listen as attentively as I know how.

On Imaginary Kings:

Imaginary Kings is the second in my trilogy, and perhaps the most engaged with the Secret History of the Mongols. The Secret History is our unique primary source on the life of Tchingis Khan, being the only account from a Mongol perspective, written down within a few years of his death, by people who knew him. Its spine is the love and rivalry between Temujin (Tchingis) and his anda, or sworn brother, Jamuqa. This story too is the guts of mine. I try to follow the Secret History not only in its events but in its sensibilities and attitudes. It is a glorious source for a novelist to work with: rich in human incident, in conflicts and quandaries, in poetry.

On Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe:

Rounded Globe (a digital publisher of independent scholarship) gave me the opportunity to write about my craft, and to turn my explorations of the Secret History of the Mongols into a nonfiction format -- to account for a few of the conclusions I had reached while writing my novels from this source. The Secret History is not only underutilized in Western fiction, but remains understudied as a text. I passionately believe we have more to learn from it than we have yet understood... although my suggestions are speculative, tentative, and offered in a spirit of inquiry.