5 Questions with Saman Shad
Saman Shad is a writer, editor, journalist and teller of stories. Much of her work is inspired by her experiences as a third culture kid, growing up and living in Pakistan, the Middle East, the UK and Australia. Her writing credits span mediums, including radio scriptwriting for the BBC in the UK and the ABC in Australia, and playwriting, with works commissioned by theatres across London and Sydney.
She is a regular writer for several publications, including the Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and SBS. She has also worked on screen projects, including developing the feature film One of Us with funding from Screen Australia. Saman is a proud mum of three children and lives with them and her husband in Sydney.
No.1
Tell us how the idea for The Matchmaker began. What inspired its conception?
A family member in Sydney was looking to settle down with a partner, and had asked their extended family for an arranged marriage. I found this fascinating, especially as this person grew up in Australia. No one in my family knew how to go about arranging a marriage so that’s when the idea of a ‘matchmaker’ began to form in my head. I wondered how a matchmaker would operate in a contemporary society like Sydney and how that would work, especially within the setting of a desi community.
No.2
It seems to me that The Matchmaker is a contemporary take on arranged marriages that can be an emphasised norm in some desi communities. Can you speak more to this?
Saima [the matchmaker character in the book] operates a little differently to how most conventional desi matchmakers do. Whereas many matchmakers match couples based on things such as profession, class, religious background, Saima is more interested in matching couples based on their personalities and what they are looking for in the future, among other things. This causes some drama in the community because people don’t like how unconventional' she’s being. I was curious about how matchmaking in a Western desi diaspora would work, and how many are still attached to traditional concepts of marriage where it’s important for a specific subset of a community to marry within that subset. I wanted to explore these biases but also look at how we can modernise arranged marriages.
No.3
You’re a journalist, scriptwriter (for both TV and radio), playwright, and now novelist. Why do you write in all these different formats instead of sticking to just one or two? How do you strike a balance between the different forms of writing, and what is involved in the decision-making when you choose to pursue one over the other?
One thing I would say to anyone who wants to be a professional, working writer is to diversify your skillset. Writing is an art form, and like any art form the more you work on your craft the better you get at it. It doesn’t mean you should limit yourself to one or two formats; you can pretty much write for any medium and you will be discovering and extending yourself as a writer. I’m lucky that over the span of my career I’ve been able to write for a number of mediums—each one of those mediums came with their own rules but they also taught me a lot about writing itself.
I’ve spoken with a few writers about sustainability as a writer and almost everyone I know who has managed to write for a living has not only had to write for different mediums but also have had to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset in their approach to writing. This means thinking outside of the box and thinking about how you can use your skillset to make a living. In terms of striking a balance around which medium I write in, it often comes down to what projects and concepts are interesting to me, and also which ones pay me money so I can make a living.
No.4
On the subject of you being a playwright, your most recent play The Marriage Agency showed in Sydney in late 2022. In an article for The Guardian, you said that you wrote the play ‘because I never saw plays about people like me on our stages here in Australia’. Even if stories and art by POC are becoming more visible in recent years, there is still a lot more work to do. Did you write The Matchmaker with a similar thought in mind? I’d love to hear more about this.
Absolutely. I write because I didn’t see people like myself in books, plays and films. There’s a lot to be said about how cultural visibility—that is, seeing ourselves reflected in the media—makes us feel like a valued part of the place(s) we call home. There was no cultural visibility of desi characters in the Australian media landscape when I was growing up, and there still hardly is. But I’m hoping that slowly things are starting to change. Australia is lagging far behind in terms of reflecting cultural diversity in the arts and media but on the positive side at least there is work being done to improve that. My ultimate hope is that my kids have a different experience growing up here—that they see themselves and their experiences reflected in the books and media they consume.
No.5
Why was it important for you to write this book as a romantic novel instead of another genre?
I wanted to write something that offered light during dark times, especially as I wrote and edited much of this book during the COVID-19 lockdown years. Our news is full of awful things happening in the world and I hope that my book would be a bit of a respite from that. Also, I loved rom-coms growing up and I wanted to write a rom-com where both protagonists are POC—it’s something I haven’t seen much of even now—mostly to show that we can still be very different people even if we come from a similar cultural background, due to how each of us are brought up and our experiences of life.
Find out more
Sparks fly in this glittering romantic comedy about love, marriage and mistaking your own identity.
Matchmaking is easy. Falling in love on the other hand ...
Saima knows that she’s a great matchmaker. She has the weekly wedding invitations to prove it. So why has her community started turning against her?
The desi community in Sydney has eyes, ears and mouths everywhere, and Saima’s feeling firsthand the impact gossip can have. Too modern, too focused on compatibility.
She’s about to pack it all up and move back in with her Ammy when an eligible bachelor’s wealthy parents show up at her door. They’re offering the biggest payday she’s had in years, but there’s a catch: she has to convince their son to accept her services without letting on that it’s his parents pulling the strings.
Kal is handsome, successful and starting to worry about his path in life. What does it mean to be a third culture kid? When a woman falls into his life challenging everything he thought he knew about heritage, life and love, it might be the answer he’s been searching for.
But Saima wrote off love a long time ago – has she hardened her heart too much to see what’s right in front of her?
Can a matchmaker recognise a perfect match?
Get it from Penguin here, or at all good bookstores.