2023-12-31 10:12:25
This novel, Travelers from the continent, of Eva Diaz Perez (Seville, 1971), published by Gutenberg Galaxycovers a century, more or less, of trip of an English couple (he is a travel storyteller) who seeks, in their long walk, the essence of displacement. It is not about looking or admiring, but about knowing who has passed through those European places where the Anglo-Saxons, like the protagonists, have died of pleasure or curiosity.
The pen, that is, the writing of Eva Díaz has been hardened in other books of the same traveling nature (Routes of the Spanish exile in London, The dust of the road: the cursed book of Rocío…) and with others, The Sleepwalker of Verdun, The Memory Club, Children of Noon y Memory of ashes, She earned the respect that is due to a journalist who exercises with enormous skill both fiction and the description of the real or invented landscape that, for example, supports the enormous speed of this novel.
We spoke with her in the same place where she presented her book, Tipos Infames, a bookstore in Madrid.
Q. The writing of this novel is especially fast.
A. Each story asks you for a rhythm, and I obey. It depends on what is to be told, whether what is being described is whispered or quickly. Here there is a sustained rhythm, but the travel books that require slow times are also claimed, contrary to what the current urgency of travel seems to require, the memory of which is entrusted to the selfies and not to the experience that is being lived.
Q. There is a book by Julio Llamazares, The slowness of the oxen… That slowness is also a challenge. In his case, the slowness of the trip is matched by the speed of writing…
A. I greatly defend the literary journalism that has been practiced and that is still practiced. It gives a lot of pulse in the narrative, I claim it and sometimes it sneaks into my own books. In the case of this novel, I wanted to tell the story of a man who travels, but above all he thinks and remembers. That’s why that tempo, that rhythm, that the novel has was necessary. I am very bored with books that entertain themselves, for example, by telling a battle, and the same thing happens to me with travel: journalism has taught me to go to the essence of things, of travel as well, and here I apply those teachings to give rhythm to the novel.
Q. You cite journalism a lot, but this reader has the impression that this is, of yours, the book that contains the most literature, as if the journalism you are looking for is here defeated by literature…
A. It’s true, there is a lot of literature here, even poetic literature. Not supposedly poetic, but literature that seeks beauty, not only what is told but what underlies the writing, and therefore in the style. There are very bitter parts, too, but there are especially happy parts that serve, among other elements, to pay tribute to beauty, that European beauty that the protagonists are looking for. That is literature, but the speed of journalism helps me balance the ambition of showing the happiness that I describe.
“This is one of those books that seek to remain in the reader’s memory, to continue growing in those who have read it, as if they were continuing the journey.”
Q. It is a short and complex novel, full of facts, as many facts as there are routes…
A. I wanted it to have a lot of density. That it was read easily, but that it left a residue… It is one of those books that seeks to remain in the reader’s memory, that continues to grow in those who have read it, as if they were continuing the journey. In this case, it is the last trip of a person, Hugh de Girard, writer of travel books, who decides to travel through the Europe that he loves and that he returns to search for. With him goes his wife, Violet Archer. As they travel, they remember their life in London.
Q. And he dies at the end of the trip, as if he were still traveling, so death has no proper name. You make that final fact remain as if in a nebula, typical of life that is abandoned without noise…
A. As if he continued traveling, yes… We say goodbye with him to the last thought, there is his last lucidity that I wanted to portray literaryly, what is going to happen to his library, which is like the biography of its owner. It is the autobiography of this man who dies, he has been counting the places he goes, we know about the seeds he has planted in the garden, the books he reads, so when he dies all that stays, it is part of his farewell , but you don’t die with him… That ending is evidence of his death, but it is a celebration of life. He has celebrated living, drinking and eating, something that is part of the pleasures that have been described, so the whole, the entire novel, wants to convey the happiness of life, and the happiness of the moment.
It is a journey through European memory, to the past, to everything that the old continent has been for history. To what it is for us and, above all, what it is for the character who gives meaning and journey to the book itself.”
Q. Where did the decision to launch this total journey come from?
A. It is true, it is a total trip, which is also done by car, on trains, on boats… That is the physical trip. But then there is the time trip of someone who also remembers the journey that has been his life, and is someone who is saying goodbye to everything, from England to Italy or Switzerland, passing through France, through so many places, walking through a Europe that I I wanted to walk with the readers. Giving the sensation that together we were traveling through corners that we already knew and where unforgettable things have happened for the traveler or for the world. So it is also a trip through European memory, to the past, to everything that the old continent has been for history. To what it is for us and, above all, what it is for the character that gives meaning and journey to the book itself.
Q. It’s a fast book, I told you before. Where does the urgency of this writing come from that it seems like you haven’t left the table while you were writing it?
A. Well, I started writing it ten years ago… That is, other books have gotten in the way. So it is a very refined novel, I have removed a lot of debris to leave it in its quintessence, the things that happen are here, without vertigo, but it is a prose that is born of speed. It is a delayed book because it is told so that the characters explain themselves and recount the journey itself, with its comings and goings. It is, in the end, an exercise in narrative purification.
Q. It is the novel of an Englishman who travels through Europe. And it is written as if an Anglo-Saxon were holding it by the hand. Weren’t you afraid of the challenge of imitating these very special travelers, the Anglo-Saxons?
A. It was getting into the head of an English gentleman and, in a certain way, entering the soul of London… It is true that London is portrayed in different periods… I really like challenges… A previous book led me to get into the head of a grammarian… Here I did not want there to be an epic like that, but nevertheless there is, it is the mind traveling, and there I narrate those trips traveling through landscapes that are life itself, the history of people and of a traveler who Looks at her.
Q. It’s fast, like a telegram that crosses the centuries…
A. He has that vertigo… And he is constantly looking back. Vertigo does not look to the future, but to the present, and leaves behind a long tail of centuries, of things that have happened… It is memory of the past, of that fatigue of history, which is projected on the facades of any European city. where we go for the pleasure of traveling.
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