After in 2016 Homeland become an extraordinary success, every Fernando Aramburu’s book launch is a must attend event. In his last novel, El Niño, he takes a tragic event happened in the Basque Country in the eighties —the death of fifty children in an accidental explosion— to analyse the effect of grief on a family. Different strategies for coping with grief that everyone can relate to.
Your last work, El Niño, begins with the explosion that took the lives of fifty children in Ortuella. What did you see in this tragedy to save it from oblivion?
This novel arose from the confluence of a memory that has never ceased to be alive in my mind and the circumstance that I am engaged in a narrative series project centred on stories of people from my homeland. I think I came to the subject at the same time as the subject came to me. I worked as a teacher in Germany for more than twenty years. Some of the children I taught were the same age as the victims of the Ortuella accident. This is one of the reasons why I have never been able to forget this event. I just had to find the tone and the way to start writing the book.
When faced with a painful loss, each person is different. Are these blows the ones that best define us as humans?
I would say that our answer is always human, we don’t need to keep asking ourselves what we are and who we are. And the same answer is given when life is generous with us and gives us luck and happiness. However, each person has his own thoughts, his own economic and educational level and obeys certain socio-cultural patterns. His reaction to misfortune will depend on all these factors. That is what my novel depicts: the different vital strategies the characters use to cope with grief.
Is it possible to make sense of the pain or is it enough to cope with it?
Everything shapes us, including pain. I do not rule out the possibility that having experienced it first-hand will foster in us positive feelings of empathy, solidarity and acceptance. When I was young, I dropped a vinyl record I loved on the floor. It didn't break completely, but it was chipped, which prevented me from hearing the first song on each side. I didn't have the money to buy a new one, so I had to give up two songs and I could not enjoy the rest. I guess it's the same with life's misfortunes.
We are children of our time by force. Every day we are bombarded in the media and on the Internet with tons of mournful news, explosions and deaths, fatal accidents and murders. How can we take on such an abundance of misfortune from a personal point of view? Rather than feeling, we find ourselves unable to relate emotionally with everything. However, when pain arrives and affects someone close to us, then our empathy is challenged, and we cry and we sympathise and we are not the insensitive person we thought we were.
El Niño is the culmination of the personification of the text, which you had already insinuate in other works of yours. Do you like to make things difficult for yourself in your novels?
I like formal difficulties. In fact, there is not a single title in the Basque People series without some kind of technical challenge. Why am I doing this? Because challenging myself keeps me productive. Also, I cannot deny that a certain degree of experimentation, with its undeniable playful component, contributes to make me enjoy the work.
In your books, women are delightful characters, but men are depicted more severely. Feminine merit or masculine demerit?
I am not sure, but perhaps this peculiarity reflects the human universe in which I grew up, where brave, hard-working, strong women were abundant, but the men, often burly, had a fragile psychology. However, I must admit that there were exceptions, as in my books.
From this event, you portray the Basque Country in the eighties. Would the human reactions have been different in another time and place?
I tend to think that the experience of loss is universal. I don’t believe a Polish or Argentinian reader needs footnotes to understand my novel, even if the setting and the history of this place give the story a particular taste.
Regarding the trauma of terrorism, has this drama been faced honestly? Have we turned the page or have we swept the dirty laundry under the carpet?
Fortunately, terrorism is not practised in our country, we no longer have to deal with an active terrorist group and, therefore, the news largely omits this subject. This does not mean it must be forgotten. There is still a lot to write and remember. There are still victims, who will always be so, and perpetrators, some repentant, some proud of the crimes they committed. The fight for one of the two narratives to prevail is ongoing and will continue.
You don’t seem very affected by your literary success. Is it related to the German austerity after so many years living in Hanover?
Success is fine with me as long as it does not deprive me of serenity. If I have to express gratitude, I do it, but then I go back to my house, to my reading, to my walks, in short, to my placid routines, and that's enough for me.
I suppose you enjoy Spain every time you come back. Do you know the Paradores Network? Do you have a favourite?
I know some Paradores, especially the one in Zafra, where I was hosted three times on the occasion of the Dulce Chacón Prize. I loved it.
