Naomi Alderman - 'Sacrifice as a vital act is hard for us'

Naomi Alderman's new novel retells the story of Christ from a Jewish perspective. She explains her thinking to Paul Blezard

Naomi Alderman

It seems more recent than five years ago, the day when Naomi Alderman accepted the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year prize and in a grand room in Christ Church, Oxford, glowed with an infectious enthusiasm that marked her as a name to look out for. Her writing since then has more than fulfilled that promise.

Her debut novel, Disobedience, in which her protagonist escapes a background of orthodox Judaism in Hendon, north London, for a life of independence in New York, only to have to return, caught the imagination with its finely detailed portrayal of freedom and familial heritage. ("A book about Orthodox lesbians is what people thought of it," Alderman says. "I thought it was about faith.") Her second novel, The Lessons, explored privilege and the contaminating effects of wealth on the weak, and showed Alderman as a mature and thoughtful writer with a visceral understanding of how insular communities work.

With an early career such as this, it would be easy to assume that writing was always her aim. It had been a pre-existing condition. She penned a novel while at university, a bildungsroman that she soon abandoned, but after graduation, Alderman "felt the need for a proper job", and started working for the high-flying law firm Freshfields, which sent her to Manhattan in 2000.

Timing is everything. The following autumn, she looked out of her office window and saw the aircraft hit the twin towers. There is a flicker behind her eyes as she explains that "Nothing would ever be the same ... I remember thinking that there would be people in the towers who had been thinking exactly what I had – that I would just do this job for another couple of years and then I'll write that novel I'm meant to write."

Realising not only that she had reached a cul-de-sac in her life but also that she needed therapy, she started writing within three days.

Her latest book, The Liars' Gospel, had its genesis many years ago while Alderman was studying Hebrew and Latin A-levels. "It not only gave me an interesting perspective on Rome, but I thought I'd make a very good educated 19th-century woman. I can even embroider!" Her teacher showed her the passages in the Talmud that refer to Jesus, and Alderman said that "someone should write a book about the Jewish Jesus; explore what 'we' think happened." The teacher dismissed it as a very bad idea, but every Easter the thought returned to Alderman. "The passion plays and services on the radio kept bringing me back to it."

Not long after she had finished The Lessons, she was at a dinner sitting next to the author Giles Foden and telling him the ideas she had. "Foden made me go through the best of them one by one and at the end said I should write the Jesus one. His explanation was that with a third novel you are sufficiently bedded into a career that you can afford to take on something big." Such sound advice evidently chimed with her, and after 20 years of gestating the ideas, she embarked on it.

It might be thought that the burden of such an enormous subject would weigh heavily on a young author. Alderman claims quite the reverse. "I spent nine months reading, to feel the sand and taste the food, and I probably shouldn't say this but, of all the things I've written, this was the easiest. It just fell out of me. After I'd been thinking about it for such a long time, it just felt right."

She explains that she knows her own process, that she has to write every day, that 500 words are too few and 1,000 too many. While she doesn't plan, she doesn't set off into nothing, either, but writes scenes, blocking them out, to use the theatrical term, until she has a sense of where the story should start.

In this case it is with a scene of sacrifice. Alderman explains: "We understand about occupying forces and massacres and riots today, especially with the events of last summer, but the idea of sacrificing an animal and feeling that it is a spiritual and important act is very hard for us to get our heads around. Once I had written that scene, I knew I had my beginning. It makes sense of why everything else that then happened was important."

While discussing the importance of starting well, Alderman mentions Margaret Atwood, and that she is being mentored by her as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Modestly, she fails to mention that Atwood selected her, but she shines with pride when she says that she has to spend six weeks with Atwood and is soon to go to New York with her. She blushes slightly when she explains that Atwood has read The Liars' Gospel, liked it and pronounced it "great". There are rumours of a two-handed project between them, but Alderman demurely refuses to comment on the matter.

She is aware of the potential minefield into which writing about Jesus might take her. "It is meant to be a confrontational work. I have no wish to offend, but I do think that holy cows need challenging. I like things that take you by the hand and say, 'you think you know about this, you think you understand it, but there's so much that you don't.'"

As we leave her home, with its view over a meadow towards Wembley stadium, Alderman glances shyly at the frames on the hall wall, her young writer prize from The Sunday Times in one; in another, the Orange Award for New Writers, neatly and carefully presented. They mean something to her. She has earnt them, and the forsaking of the proper job has worked out, paid off. But the wall still has some spaces and The Liars' Gospel may well see them filled. Deservedly.

The Liar's Gospel By Naomi Alderman, Viking £12.95

'This was how it happened. It is important to quiet the lamb, that is the first thing. A young man, learning the skills of priesthood, sometimes approaches the task with brutality. But it must be done softly, even lovingly. Lambs are trusting creatures. Touch it on the forehead just above the spot between the eyes. Breathe slowly and evenly … Hold yourself steady. Whisper the sacred words. Grasp the knife as you have practised …'