You were born in an iconic year like 1968. As a writer and also as a citizen, what do you think when you look back and see that there was another terrible war in Europe years later? Of course I mean the war in Ukraine.
It is foolish to wage war in Europe after the Second World War. However, we seem to have fallen into a kind of memory gap. The truth is that II. We began to forget everything very easily, including the disaster of World War II. And when you forget a war, you are doomed to restart it. We thought that memory was given to us forever. But in reality, memory is a daily effort. You should exercise every day.
I wish I knew In any case, our literature and stories will be very important. Because right now there is another war behind the real war: the war of words and propaganda. We will also need to learn how to wage that war. The literature and humanity of stories that we tell ourselves, that inspire and evoke true empathy, are a natural weapon against propaganda.
“The memory extinction, our collective Alzheimer’s disease, is a breeding ground for nationalism and populism.”
How do you evaluate your work and career after winning the International Booker Prize, one of the most important awards in literature? Are you proud? Are you where you want to be when you start writing?
I didn’t think of Booker when I started writing. If the writer thinks about rewards while writing, it will only distract him. Writing requires tremendous concentration of heart and mind, it is hard work both physically and mentally. You only think about how to survive while doing your best. Now I know what Booker is. This is a big thing. To understand this, it is enough to know the names of those who have been nominated in the past. Names like Milan Kundera and Gabriel García Márquez. And those of Margaret Atwood, Olga Tokarczuk, Julian Barnes… I learned my craft from those people. Having his name next to him… that’s reward enough. Receiving it was a real feeling, pure joy. And, of course, an opportunity for more people to read what you write.
In Las Tempestálidas, he tackles one of the most important political issues of the moment: our relationship with the past. Gaustín’s prediction that “a kind of global madness is coming” is quite accurate. “I was starting a new life, life as fun,” he continues. Do you think the rise of the far right and nationalism in Europe and populism around the world are mistakes to be avoided?
Calling them “mistakes” is an understatement. I try to think of exactly this recreated life in the novel. Understanding how the extinction of memory, our collective Alzheimer’s disease, has become a breeding ground for nationalism and populism. Europe must have adequate defence, it can be said to be immune thanks to culture. But it is not, in reality, like the others, he succumbs to the epidemic of the past.
And what have we neglected as a society in the last thirty or forty years?
My short answer includes three things: culture, empathy, and education.
In all his work, his narrative approach is playful and entertaining, as well as serious and thoughtful. What exactly do you think about satire and humor as a literary medium?
When you feel the kitsch of nationalism blooming around you, you have no choice but to immediately put on a shield of irony and satire to protect yourself. I come from a country where history does not show kindness, and neither my ancestors nor I would have survived without irony and self-irony.
Beyond his novels, poems, stories and plays, there is a truth that arouses courage and strength in his readers, and he has a civic stance that he openly defends. Do you think you have a social responsibility as a writer?
In my opinion, one of the most beautiful features of European literature is that the oppressed, the oppressed, the attacked, the humiliated and the arrogant are not afraid to take their place on the side of the loser. You can’t be a good writer unless you’re hypersensitive, an open wound traveling the world. I was 21 when the wall fell and there was no way to remain indifferent to everything that happened to me and the people around me.
“You can’t be a good writer unless you’re hypersensitive, an open wound that travels the world.”
I really like the titles of his books, especially The Physics of Sorrow. Physics deals with the tangible, precise things, the things that surround us and that we can touch. And in that sense, I have the feeling that what he seeks with his literature is to confront the exact sciences within us. We don’t have exact sciences on loneliness, joy, nostalgia or love, but we have their literature. Is that your purpose for writing?
Thank you very much; yes, this is what the protagonist of The Physique of Sadness says: How is it possible that the most important things that make up us are not physics: sadness, uncertainty, fears, etc. In fact, each of my three novels falls within a field of science. The natural novel is about natural history, and Las tempestálidas is about medicine and the sciences of memory and amnesia. It seems to me that literature precedes science and is an important part of it. It makes perfect sense to me that they go hand in hand. Because at its center we find the same intersection: man and his nature.
“Explaining sadness is the only way to make it docile and bearable. Accumulated and untold sadness turns into an explosive substance»
His literature analyzes the visible and invisible crises of the times we live in. Do you think it is possible to change reality with writing and art?
Yes, naive as it may seem, I still believe that our words and stories transform the world. Just as old books and movies have taught us, as I believe good always wins in the end.
And do you think a writer can translate emotions like sadness, is that possible? I ask because The Economist published an article in 2010 describing his homeland, Bulgaria, as “the saddest place in the world”. I’m sure you remember.
The author can at least try, and it is his duty to try, to translate and describe the sadness. Because expressing sadness is the only way to make it docile and bearable. The accumulated and untold sadness turns into an explosive substance.
At one point he referred to the “absence of events” in recent Bulgarian history, when the communist era passed without mass protests that shook other parts of the Eastern bloc. He even went so far as to say that the fall of the regime in 1989 was “too easy”: when the Communist head of state had to step down, “television told us we were already free.” What kind of relationship do you have with your country?
The answer to these questions is a great novel. And luckily, I’ve tried to reflect that in my recent books. I don’t have a short answer. I love where I come from, my country, I’m helpless sometimes, but I still think I have the right to tell him when he’s wrong, someone wrote.
And what horizon do you foresee for your country? And for Europe?
At the moment, not only Bulgaria, but all Europe and the world have a horizon problem. We live in an acute future and a lack of meaning. For example, something much more serious than the deficit of fossil fuels.
By the way, what do you think of the stereotypes that still exist about the Eastern European temperament?
That’s what clichés are for, to turn them upside down, to look closely, to put them between a stone and a hard place.
The natural novel chronicles the decade of the 90s and the Physique of sadness during the 20th century. How would you describe the last ten years? And what do you expect from the next?
In the mechanism of time, common and human time, something has turned upside down and jumped. So I sat down to write Las tempestálidas. This was felt particularly strongly in 2016 and there it started at some point the last decade. I don’t know when it will end. I would describe it as a swamp in time, a gap in the future, and an escape to the bomb shelters of the past.
A paragraph from Natural Novel: “How is a novel possible in these times when we no longer have a tragic feeling? How is the idea of a novel even possible when the sublime has disappeared and all we have is everyday life? I want you to answer these two questions.
not be able to. But the questions we can’t find the answer to become novels.
What part of daily life does literature occupy? And yours?
The schizophrenic thing is that literature flows inside me, whereas outside I have to deal with a life where literature does not give you practical skills. In order to endure this world and myself in it, I try to reconcile myself with the world, to turn it into literature without being noticed.
Do you think literature is as important now as it used to be?
More importantly, we don’t know yet.
In The Physique of Sadness he mentions Scheherazade and mentions the Minotaur’s Labyrinth, two legends on which his novel is based. For Scheherazade, literature and stories give meaning and save us, they give us another day in life. Do you foresee a good future for literature?
Literature has superpowers of tremendous simplicity. I’ll mention only one: it builds popularity and resistance, which is something that’s extremely important right now against the stigma and kitsch of national-populism.
Today’s readers are fascinated by novels that flirt with autobiography and challenge distinctions between fact and fiction. What do you think about this type of literature, what is your relationship with it?
This is not literature, it is our life. It seems to me that I created my character, Gaustín, precisely with the secret idea that he would invent me. I made him a good game.
Concluding, I wonder what gives meaning to a writer’s life in the 21st century…
There is only one meaning for any person, not just for the author: to save the world and the nursery for at least one more generation. And that shelters don’t become bomb shelters. is it small