Thomas Peermohamed Lambert on the virtue of patience
Thomas Peermohamed Lambert always knew that he wanted to write, and when he graduated from Oxford in the depths of lockdown, there seemed no better time than to start.
He signed with his agent in Spring 2022, and in Summer 2023, his novel, Shibboleth, a darkly comic tale set in Oxford, was sold to Europa Editions.
When we met in October, its publication date of May 22nd 2025 was exactly seven months away. My novel had been on submission to publishers for five days and what I hoped to learn from Thomas was the virtue of patience.
You signed your book deal in Summer 2023, but when did you find out the publication date?
Throughout the edit there was a nominal date of March 2025, but that was pushed back to May to give me a bit more of a run-up for the publicity stuff. It’s fairly common that the date isn't set in stone.
Are you finished now?
I’ve finished the copy edits for Europa. I've signed a deal with an American publisher, and I'm working on the edits for them now. It's nothing structural, just slight tweaks. Americans are allergic to the word ‘got’, for example.
Given the subject of your book, do you think it's had a post-Saltburn boost?
My book is not very Saltburn, but I wonder if there’s a little frisson of excitement that attends Oxford-based novels because of it. There’s a lot less full-frontal nudity in my book. I suppose there are some thematic similarities; it’s about the weird, rarefied world of Oxford and class, so maybe I got a little Saltburn bounce, but Oxford is weirdly fascinating to people around the world.
I think it’s almost grouped in with Hogwarts.
That’s pretty accurate. It’s a weird old place.
And some of it is literally Hogwarts.
Yeah. I think Oxford's the key to a lot of the social class neuroses in this country. The people there are very weird about it, and the people who aren't are very weird about it.
It’s seven months to the day until Shibboleth comes out.
Is it? Christ, so it is.
I feel like the date would be branded on my brain 24/7. Is it not for you?
I’m a much less natural salesperson and a creature of marketing than I am a creature of the text, so my mind is very much on my next novel and I’m back in Oxford doing my doctorate. I’m a writer - I can’t hold down a proper job.
The nice thing about this is that it’s completely flexible. A doctorate in literature is just a library card, really. You’ve got to write some essays and read some books…that’s what I do anyway.
You mentioned a second novel - did you get any advice from your agent about your approach?
Both my editor and agent are almost too respectful of my wishes and process. I’ve not been pressured into anything, which is nice as I feel like I’ve had real freedom with it.
Did you sign a multi-book deal?
No, but I hear that's very rare for literary fiction debuts. It’s a lot more common in the commercial and YA spheres that are more conducive to trilogies and series.
So there’s no external pressure for a second book?
External pressure is one way of putting it - I think of it more as job security. I would love a multi-book deal - if someone wants to give me one, I’d be very happy!
You’re doing your doctorate, working on American edits and your second novel - is it the case that you’re balancing the book with your life rather than your life with your book?
Sort of. I’ve found that now that I’ve got the deal and I’m starting to write for other publications, I’m getting invited to a lot more stuff. Being a writer is, by necessity, solitary, but it’s a lot less solitary when you’ve broken into it, and I'm glad to have commitments on that front.
Academics don’t want to tell you this, but you won’t meet any decent one who has a well-regimented work schedule. It’s all fits and starts, long languid periods of doing nothing and then a mad burst before some publication deadline.
How are you feeling about the run-up to publication?
Pretty good. There are aspects of publicity that I find really interesting and edifying, like chatting with you and doing some festivals and panels. I really like all that in-person, sociable stuff, and I’m very happy to write reviews and other pieces. The thing that fills me with dread and horror is stoking up an online presence in some way.
It’s hell.
You’ve got to create this avatar of yourself on the world’s worst websites.
And the algorithm doesn’t work anymore, so what’s the point?
How can you compete with all the pornography and misery?
And you have to do it with a confidence that suggests you’re speaking to 100,000 people.
But you’re quite good at it. You’ve got a voice and a platform and exude a candour and an earnestness that I never can. I write something, and it just looks like I’m being a dick. I read a post back, and it sounds completely disingenuous and smug.
I’m not very good at relatability, I feel like I need the veil of fiction for it. It’s probably got something to do with the way I was raised, but I’ve not figured that one out. It’s like a different set of affects that I have to learn, like a new language, but I suspect I’ll muddle through. If I tweet something, it’s stonily silent.
I’ll follow you.
We can follow each other.
How are you feeling otherwise?
There are nerves, but there is this sense, for me at least, that I’ve reached this minimum threshold of success. There are always new ambitions, but this is not nothing, and I need to try and enjoy it. Talk to me in seven months, and I’ll let you know if this equanimity has stuck around.
Do you consider yourself a patient person?
I think I’m reasonably patient. I think I have quite a high degree of what Keats referred to as Negative Capability. I can definitely truck on amidst complete confusion about what I'm doing and where it’s leading.
I’ve found that side of it easier than some people I know. For me, it helps that I never really had too much in the way of ambitions for a normal, bourgeois career.
Obviously, I have the usual pangs of envy when I see the paychecks of my friends who are corporate lawyers, but I never really had those aspirations myself. What I didn’t have quite so much as some was the sense of falling behind or stagnating. I was quietly and reasonably resolved to give this a go.
Every writer has moments of, "What on earth am I doing?" but I think a lot of people want to do this and drop out at some point because they felt, either from their upbringing or their university cohort, this pressure to slot into the structure of respectability.
I have a lot of friends who are in their late twenties and going through a crisis. It terrifies me that they got a random job out of university, that for most of them was impacted by COVID, and they now have this fatalism of, “I guess that’s just my career now."
I find it terrifying as well, and what’s nice is that now I have a book deal, I can be smug about it rather than just seeming vulnerable. I did history and modern languages for my undergraduate degree, and I’m a modern linguist now, so I lived abroad in Buenos Aires and Milan. It's a very good way of inculcating bohemian aspirations.
I’m a complete layabout when it comes to things that aren’t writing.
Inertia is one of the most important skills for a writer to cultivate.
Is there anything else that you’re preparing for?
The other thing that’s occupying a surprisingly big part of my brain is that I’m getting married in July next year. Planning a wedding is like planning a minor invasion of a country. I’ve also been asked to submit a couple of my pieces from my master's for academic publication, and I’m working on pieces for The Spectator and The Fence. I’ve got my thesis, my next novel and the American edit, I’m a busy boy.
What I’m taking away from this is that I just need more projects.
Everyone’s different, though. I’m very lucky that I feel every project I’m doing right now is worthwhile. I’ve learned that the moment I’m doing something I think to be inane or not worthwhile, I get very obstructed and lazy with it. I’m rubbish at paying bills, but I'm very happy with this smorgasbord.
For Work
No music
If I listen to music while I write, I find that I get very lazy in my formal attempts to create a vibe or a feeling because it's all automated already. If I'm writing a surging romantic scene, as I rarely do, if I have something of a similar nature playing in the background, then what ends up on the page ends up being quite flat.
Spinal health
This is me being an old man but look after your back. Get a good chair, don't slouch too much. A cushion pressed against your lumbar is also good. All my writerly tool kit is stuff to with staving off various health issues, so I have an app called Stretchly downloaded on my laptop, which shuts my screen off every twenty minutes so I can stand up and stretch my legs.
Libraries
I like to be near a library. I find opening books very nutritious during breaks, and there is something Pavlovian in my response to it; I work better when I'm there.
For pleasure
Reading - I love reading fiction as much as I love writing it. As far as authors go, I love Borges (who is the subject of my doctorate), Kafka, Beckett, Woolf, Bellow, Philip Roth and Nabokov. Contemporary writers I like include Ferrante, Cusk, Houellebecq and Emmanuel Carrère.
Jazz - I love Oscar Peterson, particularly Night Train. I also increasingly like free jazz, like Ornette Coleman, but I listen to lots of types of music. I’m increasingly listening to a lot of classical music. Wagner, Schubert and Schoenberg particularly at the moment for whatever reason.