Sabaa Tahir on 'An Ember in the Ashes' and Its Movie Adaptation
September 15, 2015 · from the Word & Film archive
Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes did everything a debut is supposed to do slowly, fast: bestseller lists in week one, foreign rights in two dozen territories, and a movie deal at Paramount signed before the book even reached shelves. We spoke with the former Washington Post night-desk editor about the whirlwind.
The novel braids two narrators — Laia, a slave spying for rebels, and Elias, the empire's most reluctant elite soldier — inside a brutal academy in a world drawn from ancient Rome. Tahir credits the night desk for the book's darkness: 'I spent years editing stories about occupation and disappearances. The Martial Empire is just history wearing a mask.'
On Hollywood, she's clear-eyed: the option is a beginning, not a promise. 'I've watched enough development stories to know the book has to be enough.' The fandom, meanwhile, has done its own casting for years.
Update: clear-eyed was right — the film has cycled through incarnations while the book quartet finished as a #1 bestselling series. The Empire awaits its screen debut; the novel is cataloged here.
