Colson Whitehead, the writer of both Pulitzers: “It doesn’t make writing any easier. “I tell myself: don’t screw it up.”

Whitehead answers questions from around twenty journalists from his home in New York, the one he has been able to pay for thanks to the success of award-winning novels such as ‘The Underground Railroad’ either ‘The Nickel Boys’. Presents new book, ‘Criminal manifesto’the second of a trilogy about Harlem, which begins in the 60s and will end in the 90s: eleven hundred pages later in which it hopes to capture the dilemmas that those who want to survive in those streets of Harlem that are as dangerous as they are fascinating have to face. «People are born with sin, they create a sinful society and people like Ray Carney [protagonista de la novela] He tries to find his way to navigate there. This is my point of view. I’m sorry if it’s maybe a little sad, but without corrupt people or villains it wouldn’t make history. “All of us, in some way, are faced with the challenge of embracing a life of crime or another of moral righteousness and justice.”

The author of ‘Criminal Manifesto’ appears at the press conference with the warning that he does not want to answer questions about current politics, so we journalists skirt around the issue as best we can. First attempt: how is today’s New York similar to that corrupt city portrayed in the book? «It is still a tremendously corrupt city. Our current mayor is being investigated by the Department of Justice. “He is probably going to have to leave office and at the moment he is lining his pockets with a series of bribes and very dubious public contracts.” What role does politics play in your books? “It’s about studying how I have been formed as a person, how the United States has been built, it is important to think about slavery, segregation.” And a third attempt: Have you ever thought about leaving the United States? «Well, yes, but all cities are a mess and have their share of racism. I don’t know if I would like to leave, where is a pure place, without too many racists? There’s nowhere to go, everything’s pretty fucked up. So I am here, as you are there. “Everyone is in their place.”

With Trump’s bullet dodged, it’s time to talk about the book. If the first novel in the series narrates the adventures of Ray Carney as a gardener in the 60s, now the decade has changed and he is trying to make a living as an honest owner of a furniture store. Everything is going more or less well until his daughter asks him to go to a Jackson 5 concert, and to get tickets he has to turn to his friends from the underworld. New York in the 70s is a city with a lot of crime and delinquency, with bankrupt accounts. «It is also the time in which hip-hop, punk music or disco music were born. That is to say, at the same time that the city suffered, wonderful art also emerged,” he reflects. The choice of the Jackson 5, by the way, is not coincidental. «They were very popular. It’s a historical reference that makes sense. Much of this novel has to do with corruption and what lies beneath the surface. Michael Jackson at the beginning of the 70s was a very gifted kid, who dances and sings, but now we know that he abused him, that he became a corrupt monster. He was a great singer, he wrote great songs, but he also abused a lot of people. “I wouldn’t hire him as a babysitter for my children.”

‘Criminal Manifesto’, like ‘The Rhythm of Harlem’ before it, is about the city. «New York is a city where people come, rise to the middle class, achieve their dreams and leave; and then comes another population. It is a process that begins again. That dynamism seems charming to me and also very encouraging and motivating,” he comments. What will he do when he finishes the third novel in the series? It will be after the summer, he answers: «I will have a lot of barbecues and drink a lot of beers. This is my immediate project. Of course, he does not lose sight of the television adaptations of his works. ‘The Nickel Boys’ is also a movie, “so far with good reviews.” A series of ‘The Underground Railroad’ has already been broadcast and there is a project underway, “at the moment stopped”, to convert this Harlem trilogy into a series as well. “We will have to see, at the moment we are like this.”