Jaine Blackman meets best-selling author Samantha Shannon who is heading back to Oxford where she wrote and set her first novel about a dystopian future

There's no doubt that Samantha Shannon has a wonderful imagination but when she began studying in Oxford, she could have had little idea that just a few years later she would be returning as a best-selling author.

Next Saturday she appears at the Sheldonian Theatre with Andy Serkis - best known for his acting roles as Gollum, King Kong and Caesar from Planet of the Apes - in an event organised by Blackwell's Bookshop.

Andy is also, along with director Jonathan Cavendish the founder of Imaginarium Studios which has purchased the rights to Samatha's debut novel The Bone Season.

"It's wonderful - and very surreal - to be able to share a stage with someone whose work I admire so much," says Samantha, 23, who started her writing career while studying English at St Anne's.

"I'm thrilled to doing another event with Andy. We spoke together at Waterstones Piccadilly in May last year with Jonathan Cavendish, who co-founded the Imaginarium Studios with him.

"The Imagineers are such a talented team, and I'm really looking forward to working with them on the Bone Season film."

Set in an alternate-timeline future dystopia, The Bone Season follows the trials of Paige Mahoney, a powerful clairvoyant in a world where such abilities are punishable by death. Taken by force from her home in the oppressive regime of Scion London, Paige finds herself enslaved by a race of mysterious creatures called the Rephaim who live in a long-lost city that they call Sheol I, but may be more familiar to readers as Oxford itself.

Samantha, the daughter of a Met Police officer who later retired to Banbury, has said: "I chose Oxford because I know it well and it is a small enough city for me to be able to redesign it."

" Sheol I" is a vastly different place to the place where she lived, only the shell of the university remains and it has become a prison city that has been kept secret for decades: Port Meadow is a mined training ground and Broad Street is transformed into a kind of shantytown.

Samantha's big break came when her tutor urged budding writers at the college to submit their work to Ali Smith, the Man Booker short-listed author and a visiting professor of literature.

The author loved it, admiring its “huge vision” and urged her to submit her book to publishers. An agent was soon pitching it to publishers and she caused a sensation in 2012 signing a six-figure book deal with Bloomsbury Publishing, to publish the first three books in a seven-book series,

Samantha says: "It's been great. You're never going to write a book that everyone loves, of course, but the positive responses to the world and the characters since The Bone Season was published have been overwhelming."

Since she graduated in 2013, Samantha has moved to London and is now working on the Bone Season series full-time.

"I tend to work quite solidly throughout the day, writing for at least eight hours, but I'll take short breaks if the words aren't flowing," she says.

The next book in the series The Mime Order is published on Tuesday, she aims to finish the third by April, and then start researching the fourth.

Oxford Mail: Book cover of The Mime Order

"The Mime Order is set in London in the autumn of 2059 and focuses on the hierarchy of clairvoyants who make their living in the city's underworld," says Samantha.

"Paige Mahoney means to persuade her fellow criminals to stand against the Scion government, but it's a far greater challenge than she anticipated.

"There are new characters, new places, and dark secrets in abundance.

"I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope readers will enjoy exploring this version of London alongside Paige."

Will Oxford feature in any of the other books?

"I'd never say never, but there probably won't be another instalment set solely in Oxford. There are still loose ends to tie there, though, so it may well appear again in the Bone Season series, just not quite as prominently," she says.

* The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon is published by Bloomsbury on Tuesday, £12.99 hardback, £10.99 eBook.

* Samantha will be at the Sheldonian Theatre from 3pm to 4pm on Saturday January 31 with actor Andy Serkis, the co-founder of Imaginarium Studios which has purchased the rights to The Bone Season. Tickets, £5, from the Customer Service Department at Blackwell’s Bookshop, Broad Street, Oxford, telephone 01865 333623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

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