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BEST-SELLING novelist Barbara Bisco has been getting acquainted with the island whilst visiting her entrepreneurial daughter, Jasmine, who has a business base in Bahrain, and two-year-old grandson, Rafe.
The 77-year-old well-travelled writer, who uses her maiden name when penning her hot and saucy romps, enjoyed a short-break with her husband, Roger Montgomery, this month, staying at a beach-front villa on Amwaj Islands.
She has had three novels published – Tiger with a Human Soul, A Taste of Green Tangerines and the latest offering, Night of the Water Spirits.
Shortly before returning to her current home in the UK, she said: “We have loved our visit here and it is agony to think that we have to get on a plane and leave this beautiful place. Every minute of our two-and-a-half week stay has been magical. This is our first visit to the kingdom and I am already counting the days until the next one.”
American Barbara’s novels are set in Asia where she lived for more than three decades, much of it in Thailand and Indonesia. During that time she worked for the national museums in both Bangkok and Jakarta.
Her daughter was born in Indonesia and the whole family thinks of it as a second home. Although London is now her first home, Barbara is originally from New York and has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a PhD from Cornell, globally-renowned universities. Barbara’s collection of short stories have been published in the book Bangkok and Beyond.
“It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up so I started writing rather late,” she said. “In the nearly 30 years I spent living in various Asian and African countries I used to write long letters to my parents but eventually, as happens to many people, there were no parents to write to anymore.
“There didn’t seem to be any point in writing letters to myself unless I made up things to write about and I discovered that imagining people and events was great fun. That was how I started writing stories. I didn’t make up places though. They were real.”
Getting published was a lot more of a challenge and gritty determination and family support were essential elements to her success.
“Trying to get published was a nightmare,” she admitted. “I could paper my entire flat in London with my rejection slips! Finally, my husband and daughter said ‘enough is enough’. They published A Taste of Green Tangerines and my daughter showed it to the people at Foyles bookstore in London.
“They said they would have a look at it but would only market it if they liked it. I lived in terror while they read it and was wild with excitement when they agreed to put it in their window and let us put on a launch party in the store.”
It became the celebrated outlet’s ‘pick of the month’ and soon shot to the top of its best-seller list for nearly four weeks.
The novel was described as ‘a sizzling escape to a richly drawn other world’ and ‘a saucy romp through the rainforest’ and BBC London’s Vanessa Feltz described it as ‘really sexy, really good fun’.
Elated Barbara said: “They also put us in touch with the best distributor in the UK so, with the prestige of Foyles behind the book, things took off and it has been selling well ever since. Of course, I couldn’t help writing another one after that and a third one followed a few years later.
“I get to know the characters first, then put them in contact with each other and let them take the story forward. I don’t know what is going to happen until I am writing the last chapter.”
Has the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, which flew off the shelves of Bahrain’s bookshops when it was published a couple of years ago, helped with the ‘saucy romp’ genre? “Perhaps,” said Barbara. “But my books are only a little bit saucy. They are nothing like Fifty Shades.”
Barbara and Roger are proud of their daughter’s business prowess. Brit Jasmine is chief executive officer of Seven Brands, a leading international branding and advertising agency with offices in London, Bahrain, Nairobi and South Sudan.
“We are the agency for Coca-Cola across 39 markets in Africa, also for Jeep and Mercedes in Kenya. We have clients from Iraq to Indonesia, Bahrain to Burma, Qatar to Chad,” the 42-year-old high-flyer said. “Seven opened an office in Bahrain two-and-a-half years ago when Zain Bahrain asked us to be its ad agency. We have been winning more business in the region so I came out in April this year to give more support to our office in Bahrain.
“The kingdom is a delightfully easy place to live and work. I love how child-friendly everyone is here.
“Also, five years ago, my father and I set up Black Lotus Publishing in order to see Barbara’s lovely writing in print. But we were taken aback by the success of her books. The first two books were both Number One best-sellers at Foyles and A Taste for Green Tangerines beat top-selling Dame Joan Bakewell’s book on the bestseller list.
“Barbara’s books have attracted a lot of attention over the years and she has been interviewed on the BBC and featured in leading titles such as Red Magazine and Women & Home, among others.”
However, Barbara is currently not considering using Bahrain as a setting for her next novel as she said that she did not understand the place or its people well enough ... yet. She prefers setting her novels in places where she has really lived a long time and knows well.
The titles are available at Amazon or The Book Depository for various prices.
