The Argentine writer presents this Saturday at Libros Traperos ‘Sulfuro’, a ghost novel with scathing social criticism
Fernanda García Lao (Mendoza, Argentina, 1966) lived in Madrid between 1976 and 1993. It was her “city of the first times”, where she discovered “reading, love, friendship and a whole new life that allowed me to think again ». For the writer, “changing places seems to me the most interesting thing, which gives me the freedom of not belonging.” Today’s is her first visit to Murcia. In the city, specifically in the circular Libros Traperos bookstore, the author presents her novel ‘Sulfuro’ (Candaya, 2022) today, at 12 noon, in an act presented by Carmen Pujante and Paco Paños, regulars on the ‘Candaya routes ‘.
In addition to a story of fear and ghosts, ‘Sulfuro’ is an exploration of mental fragility and a scathing critique of conventional social schemes. The protagonist, the daughter of a mother obsessed with the lives of saints and a proctologist father, seeks a certain normality by moving to a seemingly quiet neighborhood. However, across the street there is a cemetery and soon her life will mix with that of the dead.
A story that is told through short chapters, one or two pages, and from the second person. «The brevity has to do with my taste as a reader. In addition, I was interested in closing this story based on the appearances that are also brief and there is no link between them. As for the narrator in the second person, the author prefers not to reveal who it is: «The readers launch their theories and there is no single possible version, they are the ones who have to complete the story with the reading».
The work moves “between the material world and the world of ideas, ghosts and existence”
from misfortune
With ‘Sulfuro’ the writer intends “that no one leaves the book as they entered; that the story has moved you somewhat; that the book casts its shadow a moment after it is read. A plot “that is told very quickly” where “the occult is taking on another dimension.”
If each book is a journey, it moves “between the material world and the world of ideas, ghosts and existence.” A journey of the protagonist, who feels an “absolute urge to get rid of a life that does not satisfy her” and that offers “a poetic and political incursion into the world that we women have to live. In the book we participate in the misfortune of this woman but we also realize how the inheritances received and the indoctrinations received influence in that attempt to be happy and not achieve it, “concludes the Argentine.
The story offers “a poetic and political incursion into the world that we women live in”
The narrator, playwright and poet has published the novels ‘Dead of hunger’ (First Prize of the National Endowment for the Arts), ‘The perfect other thing’, ‘The hard skin’, ‘Vagabundas’, ‘Out of the cage’ and ‘Vaccine Nation’ (Candaya 2020); and the storybooks ‘How to Use a Knife’ and ‘The Purest Torment’.
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