It all started when Chris Whitaker was twenty years old and working as a real estate agent in London.
One early morning he was out leaving leaflets in mailboxes when a stranger approached him and asked to borrow his phone.
Chris Whitaker replied in the negative, after which the man pulled out a knife and attacked.
- I was wearing a white shirt that day, but when I looked down, everything was just red.
Afterwards, everyone said I was lucky because there was no important organ that had been damaged, but I could not agree, says Whitaker.
After the attack, Chris Whitaker had difficulty sleeping and concentrating.
After six months, his mood had deteriorated further.
He struggled with suicidal thoughts and began to work out a plan for how he would end his life.
Found answers in self-help book
The solution to the problems came during a library visit.
Whitaker found a self-help book that not only gave advice on how to deal with a traumatic event - but also inspired a future main character.
- The book said that you should try to write about the traumatic events that happened, but replace everyone involved and the environment itself.
Instead of writing about yourself, you would create a character that was as much the opposite of yourself as possible.
Lawless antihero
That night he began writing about the Duchess, a thirteen-year-old girl who lives in California with her depressed mother and little brother.
She is lawless, silent and fearless.
"The end will be our beginning" is a suspense novel with the anti-hero Duchess at the helm.
But in Chris Whitaker's own life, she's just a hero.
- After the first night I wrote about her, I slept for six hours, and it was the first time since the robbery that I managed to sleep for so long and that I suddenly felt that I was okay again.
Watch the entire interview with Chris Whitaker in Babel on SVT2 on Sunday 17/4 at 20.00.