You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Soherblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Diana Darling, the author of the Painted Alphabet.

It's a book just published by Houghton Mifflin.

And she's an American sculptress born in Massachusetts, living for 12 years now in Bali.

And I wanted to know how this novel, which I found to be very, very charming and very

interesting in its narrative technology, how this novel came to be.

Well, the story is something that I've borrowed from the Balinese theatrical tradition, really.

It's a story that I've retold because I've always wanted to see it properly produced.

The sort of theatrical tradition in Bali is a didactic one.

It's very showy with lots of wonderful music and dance, but the intention is to teach.

And that doesn't do very much for the narrative structure of a story.

So when I came across this particular story that had been used as a sort of a miracle play, I thought, oh, that would make

marvellous theatre. And we commissioned an opera, a Balinese opera of the story, and it was

full of sermons. And then we tried it in shadow play and it was full of sermons. So finally I thought,

well, I'll write it as a book the way I would like to see it done as a show, basically.

Was it once meant to be a picture book?

No.

Because, you know, it's very nice. I've never, I confess to my knowledge, read any Balinese literature.

And so you were my introduction.

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