Madrid, May 10 (EFE) .- Fernando J. Núñez’s first novel, “La cocinera de Castamar”, became a television series that is currently broadcast, but the writer and filmmaker believes that despite the perception The success of a book is that it is adapted to the screen, this is not the case and it consists in that “it is read a lot”.
Fernando J. Núñez (Madrid, 1972) hits bookstores again with “Los ten escalones”, edited by Planeta, a “historical thriller” that takes place in Castilla in the 13th century.
The writer, who studied cinematography in the United States, has directed several shorts and a feature film and that is why he assures, in an interview with Efe, that he always writes thinking about images “and that sticks to the text.”
But, he indicates, “the important thing for novels is not that they end up being series or movies but that they have their space as books. It seems that the perception of the success of a novel has to do with making a series with it, but it is not like that. , the success is that it is read a lot and that people enjoy it “.
However, remember that he tells readers that they do not have to choose between the novel and the series or the film: “you can enjoy both and they do not have to compete.”
Despite the fact that they take place in different times and different plots, the author considers his new novel a kind of “extension” of “Castamar’s Cook”, due to his criticism of the prejudices of which his characters are victims, mistreated by life or by an unjust society.
Machismo, greed, classism, religious fanaticism and hatred of all that is different are some of the prejudices that the characters of “The Ten Steps” will face.
Set in an abbey, this novel, he assures, is a tribute to “The Name of the Rose”, not only to the novel by Umberto Eco, but also to the film starring Sean Connery, to that medieval atmosphere and its symbols that it they have always captivated.
The novel stars Alvar León de Lara, cardinal of the curia, who returns at the request of his former mentor to the abbey that was his home, which he left twenty years ago with his heart broken by an impossible love, that of a woman with the one that will be found again. And what your teacher wants to reveal to you is something that will change the course of Christianity.
Through its protagonist, Alvar, a critical thinker who has to keep quiet because he knows what he is up against, the author wanted to reflect those societies in which human beings “have allowed ourselves to be dominated by unappealable dogmas.”
The plot takes place in an abbey reflecting the enormous contrasts in which medieval society lived and the relationship that existed between reason and faith. “In the Church there is a huge demand to reproduce books and treasure them as a compilation of human knowledge, but at the same time contrary ideas were purged.”
But the true heroine of the novel is Isabel, with whom Alvar was in love 20 years ago, a woman abused by her husband in a time of subjection to man. But in the novel, this character “goes on a reconstruction trip after realizing that she has been abandoned by all of society,” says the writer.
The novel is also full of medieval symbols to which Fernando J. Núñez has returned to build the “thriller” part and which, he maintains, turn his work into a “slide”.
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