2023-06-12 09:39:37
Why did you decide to focus on the migratory tragedy of the Mediterranean?
It was the trigger for me to start writing. Some stowaways arrived at the port of Castellón. I began to see the complex repatriation involved and the dramas we have in the Mediterranean. This made me start writing. And it has ended in a novel that, really, already has little of those stowaways who arrived in Castelló, but the whole question of wondering what is happening, why they are thrown into the sea is at the heart of it… That is what leads to the captain to look for answers.
From what you comment, is there a part of reality in the work?
I found some stowaways coming on a ship to the port of Castellón. That really has nothing to do with the way the novel begins. In the novel, the captain finds the bodies of five young girls sailing through the Mediterranean. Then you can wonder how they come. There is also the question of why they have thrown into the sea. Simply because of poverty or there are other reasons. And who are they? The drama is that they are unknown people. What will their families think? Will they know? Will they ever find out that they are dead? There are many questions, which make the captain embark on a journey towards the truth and discover a fascinating country (Nigeria), with all its contrasts, unlike the rest of the world.
Why Nigerian?
It has been a matter of chance. Since everyone who arrived was Nigerian, I began to investigate Nigeria. I didn’t know what I was going to find. I have found a country with demographic conditions that make it the third most populous in the world in twenty years. A country where there are millions of people in a situation of poverty, without drinking water, which has arms and people trafficking, which has the largest focus of piracy in the world, which has the deadliest terrorism in the world. I discovered a country with 250 ethnic groups, 500 languages. These are things that seem unlikely, but they are real. That made me see that it was an ideal country to set it.
There has been a lot of work investigation behind. Has the documentation or writing part cost more?
They have been parallel. She was doing and discovering things. I have always been a curious person who wonders why. I like learning. Being a writer allows you to give free rein to the creative side and to be able to use information and make it useful. I have tried to write the novel with the four ingredients that I like to find in it: it must entertain and captivate you so that you want to read it, that it provokes emotions in you (that has been the most satisfying) and, when it ends, you must have learned something and that make you think That’s a bit of gear. I also like that the chapters are not too long. When there is a very long chapter and I have to disconnect, it tastes very bad to me. The longest has remained with about 17 pages.
He is a doctor in Mathematics and professor of Computer Science and Artificial intelligence. From science, he makes the leap to letters. Why did she decide to write the novel?
I have always liked to read. I have written a lot in my life, but never literature. I have written scientific articles, journal contributions, and many administrative texts, but I had never dabbled in literature. But when it came to managing the language, I liked it. I think that language is fantastic when it comes to expressing ideas. How can you express it with half the words and make it more powerful. It is difficult for me to make that reduction, but when you finish, you see that it is better because the ideas are more condensed and clearer. There has been an apprenticeship that has allowed me to discover the need to be precise. The novel has allowed me to be more precise with the use of language. Accuracy also has to do with mathematics.
Was this change in style and language difficult?
No. I have noticed that, since I started writing and without knowing why or how, you are improving a lot. You express the ideas in a much simpler way, without having to do a lot of revision. I started writing the novel in the present tense and I realized that there were things that did not sound right. I passed it past. There was a job. Over time, you gain more confidence.
Many of the characters in the novel are women. Is it a way of making visible that your situation is even more complicated?
The protagonist is a woman and the five girls she meets are women. She has nothing to do with what I found, that they were men. But I changed their sex because that allowed me to introduce much more current and problematic themes that need to be raised. The captain is a woman with a lot of sorority.
Do you think that society is aware of the migratory situation?
Not at all. You just have to see the lack of a common policy that Europe has and the dramas that occur. Humanly it hurts you and you see that there is no clear policy. Avoiding migration by making the most impoverished countries develop is the crux of the matter and how these migrants integrate into our cultures. Spain is a very aged society and is at the bottom of the fertility rate. If we want to maintain ourselves as a society, we need to reverse that pyramid. If you don’t grow up with more children, you have to assimilate more people.
What are the next projects?
I have another book with the rights signed, coming out next year. I’m with two very advanced.
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