Within the Heart of Wicked Creatures by Rima Orie
Within the Heart of Wicked Creatures sprung from a deep love for the country where my parents are born, as well as the idea to blend history and fantasy in a novel speculative story. I am a lover of fantasy, and fantasy elements and mythological stories have always had my interest. But I am also someone with a great interest in history and especially the marks that history leaves on our present-day society.
My parents come from Suriname, which is the country I know best after the Netherlands. For almost three centuries, the tropical country has suffered from the colonial rule of the Dutch. In addition to the banishment and the suppression of the original population, the Dutch also brought in people from all over the world to forcibly work on the plantations. Each of those demographic groups suffered from colonialism, which left deep marks in the country. And still, I was never taught about the oppressed peoples of Suriname during my history classes in high school. Everything we were taught was provided from the perspective of the Dutch, the rulers. I wanted to do something with that.
However, I decided very early on that I did not want to write historical fiction. Indeed, the question that gripped me most was: ‘What if the oppressed peoples of Suriname could have collaborated and fought back against the colonial rule?’ In reality, they were not able to, because they were kept separately, did not speak the same language, and were systematically put against one another. But what if collaboration had worked? What would that look like?
Answering that specific question became the foundation of my fantasy novel. And honestly, I think that this is what makes fantasy – or speculative fiction – such a unique genre. In contemporary fiction, most issues pertain to humans, whereas in fantasy, the whole world can be questioned. Simultaneously, many truths can be hidden within the fantastical aspects of the story.
Fantasy is nothing more than a distortion of reality. It can never be something completely new and never is entirely made-up. It can be compared to painting. We can paint with red, yellow and blue and use it to make countless of other colors. But we are not able to think up a new primary color. I tried to make a new color using primary colors that already exist. I wanted to provide an alternative history, an alternative reality with metaphors hidden within monsters and magic. And that is why I wrote this book.
Within the Hearts of Wicked Creatures by Rima Orie (Out now in paperback, Ink Road)
Rima Orie began writing on Wattpad, where her stories gathered thousands of views, and in 2018 she was selected out of 300 entries as the winner of the Moon Uitgeverij YA competition to publish her first novel, THE ROGUE PRINCE. This was nominated for the Young Adult Boek van het Jaar, the youth literature prize in Ghent, Belgium (known as De Kleine Cervantes), the Hebban (a Dutch bookseller chain) debut novel prize and the Dutch Book Week for Youth list. Her second novel, IN THE CURSED HART, published in 2022 and she is working on the follow-up. Alongside her writing career, she works in The Hague for the Ministry of Safety and Justice. Instagram @rimaoriebooks TikTok @rimaorie
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