Taken

Taken is the first-ever novel written in first-person elephant. It follows the stories of three Indian elephants who find themselves in forced circumstances in Africa, in 1868, 1879 and in the 1960s. Their stories are relayed in the dreams of an African elephant living in a retirement home for circus animals (yes there are such places) in Kentucky in the USA.

With your help this remarkable story can be published.

Who is behind the project

Alex Stone: I am a writer and artist based on Waiheke Island in New Zealand. For my short stories, I have either won, been runner-up or short-listed in eight New Zealand Literary Awards.

Taken is my first novel. It was completed under a mentorship scheme of the New Zealand Society of Authors, where I was privileged to work with Elizabeth Smither, a novelist and former Poet Laureate of New Zealand. She read every word of Taken – and loved it.

Previously, about me and my short stories, Elizabeth wrote:

“A writer of striking originality with qualities of daring and humour that are rare. Like Lloyd Jones, Alex has the ability to create a landscape so vivid the reader feels he is walking down a dusty road or in the hold of a ship.”

Lloyd Jones himself, author of Mr Pip and Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Award added:

“There is energy and confidence on every page.”

I do my creative writing in between earning a meagre crust as a newspaper columnist, interpretation writing (the blurb on signs at museums, visitor centres and walking trails etc), and features writing for many magazines.

The project

“I've read and re-read your short story, and I think this: It is intriguing, beautifully-crafted, moving and poetic, in form at least seeming an extension of your poem 'History of Anchors'. It brings the knowing eye of elephants to bear on the reader, creating the feeling of injustice I always have when I'm close to them. It's a parable of imperialism. For all these reasons and more, I loved it.”

Funding

Taken has been accepted by three hybrid publishers. I want to go with one in the UK, which will ensure distribution into the major English-speaking (and reading) markets, where the novel will resonate – Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Southern and East Africa, UK, USA.

The money raised with your generous support will go toward producing the book, and marketing it.

The book publishing industry has been through radical change. With the advent of the internet, and on-demand printing, a vast majority of new books now are either self-published or produced by ‘hybrid publishers.’

This hybrid publishing model asks for authors to bear a part of the cost of publishing, in return for a higher percentage share of the retail price of the books. This allows more interesting books to be published, with risks shared.

Themes of Taken the novel are:

• The burden – what we carry defines us.
• To be taken – on a journey not of our own making; and what comes out of this.
• Misapprehension – the consequences of a view through the wrong frame; the colonial enterprise is a reflection of- and metaphor for this throughout the novel
• Connectivity/Understanding – across species, across space, across time, using as metaphor elephants’ acute sensitivity to vibration in the earth. Each elephant in the book has a few human characters they are especially close to. They are an interesting bunch, including the New Zealander Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy (a real historical figure) – aka Basha Felika, advisor to the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros.
• Forced circumstance – pivotal characters, (humans too – especially the young Ethiopian prince) are placed in forced circumstance.The elephants reflect the extremity of this: huge animals, forced into docile servility to ‘grander’ schemes of folly.
• The meaningful (or unfinished) journey – reflected in overlapping, non-chronological narratives. Ideas of the clarity of destination, and the worth of this, are explored.
• Fictional extension of real snippets of history – the overlap of the true and the told; and the mechanisms and philosophical import of this.

I’ve written this book mostly to build a fictional world where the animals’ voices are pre-eminent. And so, hopefully, to afford us humans some humility.

The impact

This work needs to be experienced because wildlife world-wide is at a dangerous tipping-point. Even elephants – and especially the often over-looked Indian elephants – are endangered in the wild.  

The eons-old relationship between elephants and humans can be a powerful vector to carry the story of inter-species communication and mutual respect, which will lead to a better world for all our futures. The voices of these magnificent animals need to be heard, as ambassadors for all wild animals.

Unusually for a novel, Taken has a bibliography of important and intriguing additional reading – on elephants, the human-animal relationship, and the psychic and emotional lives of animals.

Only with your help can Taken be published and this work shared. Click the "donate" button to give now.

Thank you so much for your support.