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Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, discovered there was a downside to having a famous father when his debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was published last year. The reviews, which were mainly positive, kept referring to his dad. So, too, for Nick Harkaway, whose father is British spymaster John le Carre. Harkaway has just released his first novel - The Gone-Away World - only to find his old man's formidable reputation very much precedes him.
"If my dad was a lawyer and I became a lawyer, nobody would pay any attention," he says. "That's a completely respectable hereditary profession. But to be the son of a writer and to be a writer yourself is, for some reason, very troublesome. That's partly because in Britain at least, writing a book is most people's ultimate goal. To actually do it is something that is enviable, so any suggestion you have received preferential treatment or have cheated in some way is particularly excoriated."
Harkaway was determined that The Gone-Away World would be judged on its own merits, anonymously submitting the manuscript to his agent and not revealing his true identity until after he landed an impressive £300,000 ($807,200) book deal with Random House. Like le Carre - whose real name is David Cornwell - he writes under a pseudonym, inspired by Jack Harkaway, a 19th century Penny Dreadful boy hero. But that is not, as one website suggested, the manifestation of a subconscious desire to escape from under his father's coat-tails.
"It was an extraordinary article about how I had to escape the bad karma," he laughs. "I wish it was that easy. Somebody else wrote, It may be that I'm being unfair but when I see the amount of hype around this book and I see that the author is John le Carre's son, some dark part of me just hates the whole thing and wants to destroy it.'
"I was like, There's not much I can do about it. I can't help you, I can't unpack my DNA, so I just have to get on with it.' Hopefully in five to 10 years, if I write some good books, people will stop saying that."
However, Harkaway admits that The Gone-Away World would not have been received so enthusiastically if it had not been for his family connections.
"There have been advantages and disadvantages," he says. "All I ever wanted was to find my own audience. I was delighted and amazed when the book got lots of attention but it never occurred to me that people would want to ask about me. I was being very stupid but then before this I had been totally obscure, working as a scriptwriter for nine years. Nobody asks about scriptwriters and I was a scriptwriter who wasn't produced. It didn't cross my mind that it would change so much and so quickly. I am not a shy person but I do feel strange being under the spotlight and endlessly yakking on about myself."
Unlike Hill, who truly followed in his father's footsteps with a spine-chilling ghost story, Harkaway has at least embraced a different genre. For while le Carre has explored politics and espionage in classic novels such as Smiley's People, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardener, The Gone-Away World delves into the realm of science fiction. It is set in a Matrix-like, post-apocalyptic environment in which the meta-fictional wall between reality and unreality has crumbled.
"But Dad would quarrel with the label of espionage in much the same way that I would quarrel with sci-fi," he says. "Obviously, his early work is formed around the Cold War but he has written 22 books and the majority of them are not set during the Cold War and some of them have no reference to spying. He writes about the human condition and I think you have to write about something you know about. My experience in the world leads me in this direction."
The Gone-Away World has been greeted controversially in Britain and not just for apparently nepotistic reasons. Clocking in at 532 pages, it is a dense, vibrant melting pot of wild ideas that doesn't always make for a clear read. Some critics have suggested it would have benefited from more editorial pruning, although Harkaway stubbornly refused to change a word.
"A lot of people have said there were bits they liked and bits they didn't, as if that was uncommon in books," he says. "I got an email the other day from a really good American writer, who said that he thought it was really great but if you could cut this or change that, it would make it a much smoother journey'. I was like, You have just designed the book you would like to see'. I know that when I read a book and start wanting to edit it, that's when I am really engaged with it. I was delighted, because everybody argues about what ought and ought not to be in the book."
