Fiction Meets Non-Fiction In A Debut Novel By A Harvard Business School Prof

Harvard Business School faculty are a prolific bunch. In the past two years alone, HBS profs have written or edited nearly 30 different books on everything from the future of capitalism to how artificial intelligence is transforming work. But what no faculty member of note at Harvard Business School seems to have done is write a book of fiction–until now.

On Feb. 24th, Deepak Malhotra, Poets&Quants‘ Professor of the Year, is self-publishing a 500-page novel–The Peacemaker’s Code–that had consistently kept him up into the wee hours of many mornings during the pandemic lockdown. There is little doubt that Malhotra’s academic work in negotiations and his advisory work on extreme conflicts, has served as the basis for this literary work. And some of his colleagues may well see a bit of him in the book’s protagonist, Professor Kilmer, a deeply thoughtful historian of war and diplomacy who prefers his coffee hot and whose favorite room is the library where the bookshelves are filled with “the countless spirits of scholars, strategists, philosophers, historians, and generals.

There are times when you can easily imagine Malhotra uttering Professor Kilmer’s sensible advice in one of his negotiation classes in Aldrich Hall. “Winning isn’t the only alternative to losing,” Kilmer counsels at one point in the narrative. “History might seem like nothing but a series of wars, but most of human history is a story about wars that did not occur.”

Writing, of course, is a central part of an academic’s life. Over a 20-year career as a scholar, Malhotra has penned his share of journal articles, essays, case studies, and book chapters, including a trio of his own books. With The Peacemaker’s Code, however, Malhotra has written a compelling mystery, with a substantive plot full of enough twists and turns to rival a work by British mystery novelist P.D. James.

By his own reckoning, Malhotra has never found writing more “fascinating, exhilarating and rewarding” than he did bringing to life a group of characters from his own imagination. “I don’t think I have ever been so excited about anything I have ever written,” he says.

It’s possible that without the coronavirus pandemic the book never would have been possible. In early March, Malhotra had just finished teaching a new elective course on War & Peace: The Lessons of History for Strategy, Leadership, Negotiation & Humanity and thought he would follow that up with a book based on his insights from the course. But developing the course from scratch and teaching it for the very first time left him mentally exhausted. “I needed a month or two to decompress,” says Malhotra.

‘I COULDN’T GET RID OF IT. I SPENT A LOT OF  TIME IMAGING HOW THE STORY WOULD UNFOLD’

At first, he threw himself into the making of a series of free negotiation videos. And then the full outbreak of COVID changed everything. He had a chance conversation with a 25-year-old entrepreneur who gave him a kernel of an idea and suggested that Malhotra should try his hand at fiction.  “I thought it was a very cool idea and it sat there for a week. But I couldn’t get rid of it. I spent a lot of time imagining how the story would unfold and what the opening scene would be. And then, at 9 p.m. one night, I decided to  write the first page.”

The book’s opening line: They walked him down a dimly lit corridor…

Within four weeks, Malhotra had written 30,000 words and couldn’t stop writing. For him, writing–not reading–became the page turner. “I wrote every night, often from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. after the kids were in bed,” says Malhotra who has three children aged 13 through nine. “I was completely sucked into this world I had created. I began living the characters and getting to know them.”

‘PEOPLE ARE ALL CONVINCED THAT THE PROTAGONIST IS A FICTIONALIZED VERSION OF ME. IT IS NOT. BUT IT IS SOMEONE I CAN SPEAK FOR’

Of the 42-year-old Professor Kilmer, just three years younger the novelist, he says, “I know him. I see him. And yes, of couse, we have similarities. He is the closest to me in terms of having the knowledge base required to pursue his journey. People are all convinced that the protagonist is a fictionalized version of me. It is not but it is someone I can speak for. I needed the protagonist to be someone with the experience, expertise and knowledge to deal with the conflict and challenges the story throws at him. So it needed to be a character that I felt completely comfortable with. I know what happens when you get extreme push back, when theory runs out of steam, and what happens in the real world when you’re dealing with crises. Some of that gets woven in as well.”

He sent his just-completed pages to his wife, parents and friends, and they provided enough immediate encouragement to inspire him to keep going. “The book literally wrote itself,” he says. “I told my wife I feel like I am going to read a book and can’t wait to see what comes next. With three or four of these characters, I feel like I know them deeply, and I would enjoying hanging out with them.” 

And besides, he couldn’t hang out with anyone else. By then, COVID had brought normal life to a halt. “When the lockdown first happened, I was thinking I don’t want to come out of this out of shape and unhealthy,” says Malhotra. “I don’t want to look back and say this is the worst thing that happened to me. I had nowhere to go. We were not doing anything in the late evenings. A lot of the writing occurred between 10 and 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s possible I would have still started writing it. But I could see how the lockdown gave me this intensity of focus that allowed me to write day after day as if nothing else mattered.”

‘THIS IS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND COURAGE’

He finished his first full draft of 150,000 words in early August before revising and learning how to self-publish the book. Getting his work to the public became something of a project, too, from getting the book jacket designed to finding a narrator for the audio version. “I ended up tracking down the best narrator I ever heard,” says Malhotra of the interpretative voice that read him Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged over 20 years ago. “I heard it and it was so good that I went looking for other books he had narrated.” He sent Christopher Hunt, the narrator, a cold email, ultimately used his negotiation skills to find a studio in Brooklyn to work with him for the recording sessions.

The core of The Peacemaker’s Code derives from two ideas. “This is about friendship, love, perseverance, courage, and imagination,” says Malhotra, “but it’s also a story about ultimate conflict, and about having to confront an impossible no-win situation. There is a lot of strategy and negotiation and leadership in the book. Those themes are not only relevant in my lessons of history course, but also in the practical reality that a lot of us deal with when we face serious challenges.” 

Of course, writing fiction is dramatically different than writing his last book, Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle). “In fiction,” muses Malhotra, “what I didn’t realize was you were in a sense putting yourself out there. The first time someone saids to me something like, ‘I learned a lot about you by reading this book, what you think is funny and how you see the world.’ It suddenly became more personal. I also decided early on I would not sacrifice enjoyment or entertainment in order to teach a reader something with this book. If I tried to write a book that educates using fiction, I think it would have failed. I found ways to interject things from history and my work on strategy and negotiation that fueled and enhanced the story. But it’s definitely entertainment.”

Always thinking, Malhotra says one of the lessons he learned from his writing of fiction is that “you have to be ready to catch new winds. The wind that takes you out of the harbor is not the wind that will take you to the other side of the ocean. You need to latch onto new winds at different times in the journey. So for me, in the beginning I started out writing from curiosity. And then as time went on it was more about me wanting to know what happens next. And then I had people reading it and they were expecting things from me. And then I had fallen in love with each of these characters and just wanted to spend time with them. Every time it was embracing different motivations that helped me be more productive.”

‘THIS BOOK LEAVES OPEN THE POSSIBILITY OF MORE’

Writing The Peacemaker’s Code opened a new vein of creativity for him. “Part of me is a nerd who likes to read and think,” he says. “Part of me is somebody who enjoys getting in front of an audience and teaching. But there are limits to what any job allows you to do in terms of who you really are. So, I look for opportunities to create value for people in every way that resonates with who I am as a person. I might teach or do research on negotiations but then I also create the War & Peace course, which is basically a history course but with deeply practical insights.

“Then you get to do stranger things still. I created the free negotiation videos, and they are in the wheelhouse because they are educating folks I might not see in a classroom. And then you get to this book. I don’t think I cross any new lines here. I always just said I want to create value on things I care about. My hope is that this book will bring some of my ideas to a wider audience about negotiation.”

When he speaks about the book, Malhotra’s passion for his project is evident. He recalls a special year in his life–2007–when his first book, Negotiation Genius, co-authored with his colleague Max Bazerman. was published. “Three big things happened that year: My first book was published, my son was born and I got promoted from assistant to associate professor. It was a heightened time. I remember my wife and I going to a book store to see the book on a shelf. In that moment it was like, ‘Wow. It’s out there in a bookstore.’ But, when I think about this book, it’s not about seeing it in print at all. I just can’t wait to share this story with the readers. Every book you write, it’s with the reader in mind, but in this case, it’s really all there is.”

Could there be a sequel? Malhotra isn’t sure. He wants to turn back to his insights on War & Peace. Yet, he acknowledges that “this book leaves open the possibility of more. It gives you plenty of closure but there is no doubt that when you read it you might want to see what happens next with these characters. So I don’t plan to start a new book on fiction. I am going to start my non-fiction book but if it did real well I might consider it.” 

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