The Hypebeast | The Adnan Khan interview

Striving to get ahead in a world of scams, Hamid is caught in the fervour surrounding a charismatic social-media imam with questionable intentions.

Read Brett Joseph Grubisic’s review of The Hypebeast here

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sarah Marie Hi Adnan! Thank you for doing this with me. It’s nice to meet you.

Adnan Khan: Thank you for having me here

SM: Can we start with this beautiful cover? I know that there is a jaguar in the story, but how did you decide on this picture?

AK: They asked for a design brief, and I just sort of gave them notes on what I was thinking about in terms of aesthetic. In terms of tone, mood, and colours that sort of were coming to me as I was writing. Some paintings, some drawings, you know, art that influenced me in a bit more of an abstract way. I was thinking a lot about Abu Zubayadah’s Guantanamo Bay drawings and Fernando Batero’s Abu Gharbi paintings; Jeff Wall‘s “Dead Troops” and “In front of a Nightclub” also; and the colours and landscapes that inform the Yakuza video-games. Some movies as well: Dead Ringers, Maqbool and Black Friday. When you do a design brief, they always ask for a couple of existing covers as an example, so I gave them a few that I thought were interesting. The designer, Laura Boyle, came back with what was pretty close to the final cover, and I know there was some internal conversation with my editor as well. They were looking for an emblem type of image. I could be wrong, but I think Russell Smith supplied that idea of the jaguar. So, yeah, the first pass really was pretty much what we decided would work.

SM: You know, every writer I’ve ever talked to that worked with Dundurn Press really loved their book cover. I ask that question all the time because I was fascinated to find out that writers weren’t choosing their covers personally. I thought it would be more like getting a tattoo. You know, the artist might say no, or have a few insights, but they won’t reveal your tattoo they came up with after it’s already done.

AK: I’ve always had input kind of in the same way, where you give a brief description of what you kind of might like, but you understand that the publisher makes the call. I guess, you know, other things going on in those decisions that the writer might not consider right away. Marketing, or long-term trends that they might want to focus on

SM: Oh, that’s right! That’s very smart. I guess you do sort of have to trust that they know how to market your book, since that’s what they do, right?

AK: I know there are some publishers who really want a lot of control over those choices. You know, you do end up signing over not only the cover, but maybe even the title. I’ve always been pretty fortunate, for both of my books, the cover was kind of the same experience. I gave it a concept that was kind of rambling. They were very, both were very friendly, and then really knocked it out of the park. I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than having to promote a book whose cover you’re not into and have to sort of pretend that it’s the thing you dreamed of. I’m sure that can be a bit of a gnarly experience.

SM: So then, what has the social media marketing experience for this book been like for you? I kind of came into this literary space through social media, and that is how we connected, but, you’re not so active on Instagram. I don’t really see you spending a lot of time there.

AK: Yeah! In terms of a public branded social media dimension, I definitely don’t have that. I started writing professionally in 2013, and my first editor suggested that I get Twitter. At that time, Twitter was a big deal. People made it seem to be a big deal, but it never really worked for me, and I don’t know why. I always felt like it was a form that I was kind of uncomfortable with, and you know, you can see writers who really take to it, but I always kind of did it begrudgingly, and I think you could tell!

SM: Oh, interesting.

AK: If someone read my posts on Twitter when I had it, they would probably think I had a gun being held to my head. So, I made a decision after my first book; I knew that if I turn the phone off, this entire thing goes away, and I feel a little bit happier, and I feel a little bit more focused on what I really want to do. I became a writer to write, not to do social media. But, I think for some writers, it’s a sense of control, you know, over their image. I know that marketing can be really tough, even with a publicist, who has a lot of priorities. But, ultimately for me, I kind of made the call that I don’t think this is a thing I enjoy, so I’m just not going to do it.

SM: I guess I hadn’t considered how it might be obvious that someone was there begrudgingly, or how that might work against them.

AK: Yeah, I mean, if you don’t enjoy the process and you’re just focused on the end result, which is like this intangible, ephemeral, viral thing. It’s never gonna work out, right?

SM: Yeah!

AK: Occasionally, you know, I’ll see something that makes me feel like they’re speaking from their heart, and that the writer really enjoys it. They like talking to a public that isn’t necessarily their readers, and they like building an online community. When it’s genuine, you really get it, and you feel really glad that this person is enjoying the process. But, when they are not really into it, it’s just weird.

SM: What other types of marketing or events are you doing to get your book out there? Your last book came out right at the start of the Covid pandemic, so you wouldn’t have been able to do a lot of in person stuff.

AK: Yeah. In 2020 everyone was very keen on online events, obviously. I think funding had already been made available by the time my book came out, and people were just trying to figure out a way to save every festival or literary space. Almost every festival I did in 2020 was online. You know, all the invites just got morphed into online things. This time I’ve been getting in person invites and things like that. I’m kind of just focused more on tactile relationships, so I’ve been sending personal emails to people I know. But, I am a really big believer in just letting the book do its thing. A book tends to have a long tail. It’s not like a movie where it’s like, it’s quite quick. There tends to be like a year or so for the book to breathe, for you to go out and do events.

SM: Did you just say that “a book has a long tail”?

AK: Yeah, like, the publicity. Does that make sense?

SM: It does! I like it, and I’ve never heard anyone say it before, so I’m just thinking about it a little bit, sorry for the weird digression. That’s such an interesting way to think about it.

AK: Yeah, do you know what I mean? Like, when a big Hollywood movie comes out, people pay a lot of attention to stuff like opening weekend to see if they are going to take the time to see the movie. There’s no one looking at your opening day numbers for your book. You kind of have a year. At least, this was my experience for my first book. You have like a year, year-and-a-half to really get the book out there. That sense of urgency you would find with movies isn’t there.

SM: I’m sure writers would really appreciate hearing all of that more often.

AK: You know, for my first book, the reviews from bigger publications came out 4 or 5 months after the book was already published. Right? Not like, on opening day or anything like that. So I think it’s just a different metabolism.

SM: Ok, I have to ask, why is Hypebeast so funny? None of the situations in the book are funny, like, at all, but I caught myself laughing out loud several times.

AK: I really wanted it to be funny, I guess. I’m glad to hear that people are laughing. I know some readers have not thought it was funny, I think because it makes them uncomfortable. I guess they don’t expect it to be funny. Some readers have said that they didn’t really realize they could laugh until the end. I do think everything can be funny, though.

SM: In your conversation with your publisher, when you were deciding how you were going to talk about the book, how did you decide to let people know that it was okay to laugh?

There are books I read and I can’t get away from how I feel about the characters. I want to get into the plot, but I am totally obsessed with the people. Like, they remind me of someone, I think. And this book is like that for me. I had a lot of feelings about everyone in it. I spent a lot of time shaking my head. Or like, I really want to be on someone’s side, but I just hate them. There are other books that have done this to me, but there is something about a fool who is trying very hard that makes me feel like this story is happening in real time. So, I would really like it if you would talk a bit about the protagonist, Hamid. When you wrote him, did he show up fully formed and then you wrote a book around him? Or, was he created to suit the story?

AK: Was he fully formed? That’s a good question, I mean, it’s kind of like thinking that the sculpture is always there and you’re just chipping away at what doesn’t belong there. The voice was definitely there. There was this unspooling, something that just came out. At some point I became aware, maybe after a draft or two, that it was a tragedy. Right? At some point, like that thing you just said about the fool, and then it became a lot about playing with that idea of him telling you his story in the past tense. So, he knows where he ends up, but also this idea of like, what does it make him? What does it look like to survive, or even to survive your own self? That was a crucial question.

SM: Yeah!

AK: Because he gets in his own way a lot. A lot of times I wanted to be like dude, you could do something different. You can make a different choice. You’re smart enough to do it, but you’re so compelled by your interior mess that you have to constantly satisfy that internal compulsion. You know, we all have this, we all have our little things that we have to do that don’t make sense, because there’s some deeper compulsion that overrides any sort of reasonable thing that we should be doing. Some people have it in large spaces, you know, it occupies a lot of their behaviour. Some people it occupies a little bit of their behaviour.

SM: You’ve actually kind of set me up for my next question about him. What is motivating him? Like, what is that compulsion you’ve described? He reminds me, maybe, of people I grew up with, or even people who are in my life currently. They aren’t driven by power or control. I think they aren’t driven by stability, but the possibility of actually working towards something stable is not on the table.

AK: I see.

SM: I’ve never really been able to relate to them, but that character resonates because I see it so often. What is it, do you think?

AK: There’s kind of a shell game going on with him. That if you cut off a shark’s fins it just keeps going. He is persevering, and he doesn’t know how to do anything but that, but none of it is getting him anywhere. That’s just what it is. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. I think a lot of it was trying to explore that idea of these folks that just will survive the situation. They will just do it, and there’s nothing else, and that drive towards that is so powerful in them. It might not accomplish anything powerful, like you mentioned, but it will be, in its own sense, a kind of accomplishment when you consider, maybe what is stacked up against them again, internally and externally. There’s something remarkable about that overwhelming drive to succeed on whatever terms they are, you know, and to survive.

SM: Yeah! In one moment in the book, he says “I believed that if I wasn’t applying force on the world, I was dead.” But, he says that, or something like that, a few times. Can you tell me a little bit about that in the context of what we were just saying about him being a shark without a fin?

AK: Movement is really important for him. Maybe he’s not super concerned about what that movement does, or what the repercussions of that movement might be. And maybe it’s just that, you know? Maybe he’s kind of present in his movement and his moment is sort of what he’s concerned with.

SM: Okay. So then, this is going to be a weird question but, if I asked Hamid “what would be the difference between having everything under control and everything being stable?,” do you think he would be able to answer?

AK: I’m not really sure.

SM: Okay, I am going to try to tame it without giving anything away but, I think I am comparing him to his father. His father seems like someone who gave a lot of his time to maintaining stability, but was not particularly concerned with whether or not everything is under control. Because, like, you can have parts of your life that are stable, but everything around you is totally out of control, right? Hamid seems to be very good at keeping everything under control, however unstable his circumstances are.

AK: You’re right, but I’ve never really thought about the distinction. Thanks for that close read though.

SM: This sort of questioning must be frustrating for writers. Sometimes your reader is like, engaged with the characters in a way that you did not intend. But, I kind of always wanted to ask this question to people who I feel are sort of chaotic, but I can’t really ask Hamid.

AK: Yeah.

SM: What sort of research did you do for a book like this? The story is happening in different places in the world. It’s also kind of him reflecting on his life, on his family’s life, on his friends lives. What kind of research kind of goes into something covering all of the people and the spaces they have moved through?

AK: Research was a big part of it. I mean, a lot into Guantanamo Bay, but particularly what the impact of incarceration is on those men, and what their lives look like afterwards. Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slami was a big one. Lots of journalists accounts, lawyer’s accounts. But also the other side of things: Enhanced Interrogation by James Mitchell, who worked with the US military on their torture program. That was probably the biggest research component. But also a lot of stuff about scams. In fact, like the phone calls, you know, everyone gets those phone calls. I did a lot of research on those, and I was kind of fortunate that there was like a bit of a boom around the time I was writing. A lot of people did investigations into these scam call centers. I have to say, I really enjoy research. I am the type to research, and then just let it go. I don’t reference my research or anything like that, unless there’s very specific things, names and dates and things like that. The research is kind of just world building. If that makes sense? You create that bubble. You know, it’s research, but the book is fiction. I wasn’t really overwhelmed with precision in dates and names and stuff like that. But, I did need to feel correct.

SM: Oh, for sure!

AK: I was guided by my own feelings and my own process, is what I am saying.

SM: Any standout reviews or feedback so far? The book is brand new, right?

AK: I’ve done a couple of interviews, and they’ve been kind. No one has said anything outrageous to me. I think people around me are enjoying it. I really wanted it to be fun. It’s a heavy book, for sure. I wanted it to be a crime novel, because it’s so heavy, there’s all these uncomfortable moments. So, I really wanted to make it a page turner. I liked that feeling, you know, when you put it down, and then you have to pick it up again. I spent time focusing on making sure it was smooth and just fun. I really wanted it to be fun, big and ambitious.

SM: Do you get asked more questions about Hamid? Or, are you getting asked about any of the other characters?

AK: I do get asked about the other characters. I mean, it’s mostly geared towards him as the main character. But, did you have a question about another character?

SM: [laughing] No! Sometimes I just need to know how this sort of supplementary character showed up in a writer’s imagination. But this, in this case, Hamid’s personality is larger than life.

AK: Yeah.

SM: He definitely has that gigantic main character energy. I’m never confused about who this story is really about. But, I think that is why I didn’t really have questions about anyone else in the book. No one was as interesting to me. He’s foolish and self-involved, but trying and well-intentioned, in the worst possible way. He’s very concerned with what other people are thinking. There was just so much of him.

AK: Yeah, I mean, It’s funny that you said “main character”energy. It was the bigness of him. I was really almost enamoured. I really wanted to do a big character. Like, a big buzzsaw of a character! Someone who is not going to be ignored, and if he’s put in a situation, it’s going to be his situation.

SM: Right, right!

AK: The other thing is that I was very intrigued by first person, past-tense. I really wanted to do a kind of monologue. That’s really something that I was really interested in. And so monologue, you know, by its nature cuts off other viewpoints. So that was something I really was interested in, showing how you have a full story with other people while engaging with this technique that is inherently limiting, right? So what do you do with that? That was one of the main questions I had about how I would tell this story that kept me really hooked onto the manuscript. It was, this idea of someone confessing. Or, someone apologizing to you in some ways; someone telling you a story. That’s kind of why the book opens and closes the way it does in the situation. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that you’re being told a story right now. I did that so you will remember who’s telling you the story, and why they might be telling you the story, and what these things he’s telling you do and don’t do. It was a curiosity of mine.

SM: Will you do Hypebeast as an audiobook?

AK: I have no idea!

SM: Do you listen to audiobooks, or use an ereader or tablet? I don’t want to put you on the spot, so I will go first. I like asking this because I only started listening to audiobooks about two years ago. I wouldn’t have done that before because, I will admit, I didn’t really take them seriously. Or, like I didn’t think it counted as reading. I was wholly motivated to listen to them because I was worried I sounded like a snob.

AK: Sure, that makes sense.

SM: This is a long walk back to the point you made about reading Hypebeast and being told a story. Like, to actually hear it in the intended voice would be cool. I think I would love your book as an audiobook.

AK: Right? Yeah! I mean, interestingly enough, that verbal storytelling idea was very present when I was writing. I wanted to know what it would be like to read this. Because the idea is that he’s talking to you, right? So it is a baked-in auditory idea. I mean, personally. So with tablets and e-readers, I find that I just don’t remember anything. I have tried some audiobooks, then I just never followed through. To me it feels like another art form, you know?

I think a couple of times where I’ve tried audiobooks. It’s always been with books I’ve already read, and so, if the external voice doesn’t match up with what I imagined it’s an instant sort of no.

SM: Yes, exactly! But also I think there is some personal value for me if an audiobook is not what I imagined, but maybe I couldn’t have imagined that. Like, Billy Merasty was the voice actor for Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice and I would not have been able to come up with that voice on my own. All of that to say, I hope Hypebeast becomes an audiobook. I think it would be really great.

AK: That’s good to hear.

SM: Thank you so much for this Adnan! I’m really hoping. Everyone loves your book as much as I did!

AK: Thank you! It was nice to meet you.

Adnan Khan is a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. He has won a National Magazine Award and the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer prize, and his debut novel, There Has to Be a Knife, was named a best Canadian novel of 2019 by the CBC. His debut feature film, Shook, made its premier at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.

Publisher: Dundurn Press (April 22, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 408 pages
ISBN: 9781459754478

Sarah Marie

Sarah Marie is a perfectly unqualified, no-talent, lit/poetry enthusiast.A~literal nobody~ on social media, you may recognize her from commenting on your posts as if you sent them to her personally. She isvery impressedby your dedication to your work and to each other, and she believes in you.