With more than a dozen books published, Javier Cercas (Spain, 1962) He confesses that he enjoys the literature that doesn’t look like literature. That narrative that is seen as a chronicle, or an essay, or even a self-description that in the background is a reflection of the complex reality of the human being.
“What literature does is explore the infinite complexity of human beings, and novelists dedicate ourselves to describing it. This novel does have a political dimension, “said the Spanish author during the virtual presentation of his most recent novel Independence, the second installment of the exploits of the detective Melchor Marin who was born in the book highland (2019).
Cercas pointed out that literature always has a utility, in the social and educational sense, to the extent that this is not its main objective. Therefore, he assured that his novels serve as a platform for reflection on the present without it being his a priori objective when he writes them. His job as a writer, he said, is to constantly reinvent himself.
“I am here with these books for the will to renew myself as Writer, When I finish to write The monarch from the shadows, a very important book for me, he was in the greatest danger of a writer, which is to repeat himself, at that moment he is dead, that is a catastrophe and that is why there was in me a desire for reinvention because we know that in a happy world there would be no good literature ”Added the novelist in conversation with Emiliano Monge, a Mexican writer.
The author He also confessed that this project to build a great novel about the detective Melchor Marin, divided into three installments, resulted from the confinement forced by the independence revolts in Barcelona during 2017. It was the so-called Catalan Autumn when separatist groups intensified their request for independence and the revolts kept him locked up.
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“For me there is a before and after that fall of 2017, and the fury, the pain, the courage of that darkness that is in these books are the result of what broke out in that crisis that put us on the edge, and thanks to these novels I am not locked up in a prison ”, he added.
The novel takes place in the Barcelona of the future, in 2025. A scenario where there is political persecution, corruption, courage and betrayal that could well classify the story in the genre of the police literature that, according to Cercas, enjoys humility to be the great genre of the novel.
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