In 2015 we were introduced to ‘Nobody’s Empire’, a classic twee folk track from the Belle and Sebastian LP Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. The title is now doing the rounds in another format: Stuart Murdoch, the band’s lead singer, has turned his hand to novel writing which, like the song, focuses on the personal.
Semi-autobiographical, Nobody’s Empire is an epic saga, with ME, the chronic illness that Stuart has been managing for more than thirty years, in the foreground. Stuart spoke with SNACK about this 90s-set story of three people living with ME – how it was misunderstood then and continues to be misunderstood. He tells me he sees it as ‘the story of three people who are lost, who see all their contemporaries getting ahead; they try to console themselves with each other’s company and to look for the small joys while trying to recover.’


The book is clearly influenced by your own life, but what motivated you to write the novel?
I always wanted to put the record straight. I feel I’ve been riffing off this period of my life for the last 25 years. Whilst I’ve had [been affected by] ME, it actually gave me room to grow and to work with the band. I couldn’t write songs beforehand. I learned to write songs in this period, but songs are sometimes tricky things, and they can be nebulous.
It was about a long time ago, and I realised, while writing this novel, that I’m a storyteller rather than a non-fiction writer. I threw off the shackles of the biography and let myself tell some lies, paint things better than they were; make Stephen seem a bit smarter and make up lots of conversations that never happened.
Why is this an important story for you?
When I started writing I just wanted to put the story straight, but once I got into it, it became much more important to me than I thought it would. I still struggle with chronic fatigue, especially in the last 10 years, since I had kids. I’ve really struggled to be a dad and tried to work, and this has given me mental health difficulties. There’s a lot of people feeling the stress and strain of everyday life.
As I got into the book, I went through a bad period of physical and mental health – the band had to give up a load of shows. Suddenly the book was all I had, and I could write a little every day. I was feeding a lot of what was happening to me into the book.


Were there any writers who helped you adopt your own voice for literature?
Do you know the book Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby? That’s, to me, still a recent book, even though it’s early 90s. I love the way that he uses subject matter – his love of football is a framework for talking about his life. And during the telling, you get to know much more about him in an interesting way than you do about football or anything else. In a sense, I’ve used this framework with the illness [in place of football].
Nobody’s Empire is an epic novel for a debut, going through continents and decades. Was it your intention to debut with a monumental piece of fiction?
Not at all. I didn’t mean it to be that long. I thought the American passage would be short and then it ended up being half of the book!
How did you find the character creation, with being so close to the main character?
It’s hand in glove. You find a voice and you just go with it. And I don’t know whether Stephen ends up whinier than me, more intelligent than me – probably, at the time – but you just find a vibe and a voice and go for it.


Did its reflective quality occur naturally from looking back over your own musical history, flowing through you as you were writing?
Definitely, and it’s nothing if not indulgent.
Sometimes when you’re not well physically and then not well mentally, it’s nice just to escape and go back to a feeling of where the past was controlled, and there’s some rose-tinted specs going on there as well.
Those rose-tinted shades, did they influence the cover?
I’m working with Faber Books, and they have an art department. I was tiptoeing around, and I said, ‘Okay, guys, I could take some pictures.’ I took the pictures, and sent a bunch of my favourites down there. I didn’t know what to expect. And then they gave me a choice of nine covers. I could have picked six of them – they were beautiful! It was the team at Faber that decided to use that colour and the print. I am, weirdly, colour blind: it looks grey to me.
Nobody’s Empire is published 10th October by Faber & Faber. Available here.
Photo credits: Marisa Privitera Murdoch