The Cartagena writer presents in Murcia ‘El italiano’, his latest novel, in which he makes “a song to the Mediterranean”
There are certainties, says the writer and journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Cartagena, 1951), that “I would not like to have.” Lessons that he has learned over the years and that little by little have taken away from him the innocence and naivety with which he walked the world when he was twenty or thirty years old. Then, recognized the author, a member since 2003 of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), he wrote with intuitions. In his novels, the impulse to narrate was guided by “hope.” Now he writes, he says, “with conclusions.”
Pérez-Reverte visited Murcia on Thursday to present his latest novel, ‘El italiano’, a story inspired by real events that his father told him when he was young, and which he has turned “into a song to the Mediterranean”, which he defines as the “True homeland.” That story stayed in his head and accompanied him for a long time. Now he gives life to an adventure of love and war of which the author spoke at the Las Claras Cultural Center of the Cajamurcia Foundation, accompanied by the literary critic and professor at the University of Murcia José María Pozuelo Yvancos.
The writer, also invited to the cycle ‘Literatura y memoria. Narrative of the civil war ‘, in which he will also intervene this Thursday, addressed other issues, such as the pandemic, of which he said that “it is nothing more than a world war or other epidemics like those that existed before”, only that Europe has forgotten that “we live in a hostile and dangerous world”; and the current situation of the Mar Menor, which he referred to as “nonsense” resulting from “human ambition and stupidity”, as well as “carelessness on the part of the authorities who have looked the other way”, both in the Mar Menor as in many other places, he pointed out, in which similar realities are suffered.
Regarding his next projects, he assured that he still has “two or three novels to write.” “Writers have an expiration date, I have it like everyone else,” but in his case, he added, “I have one thing going for me: I’m still a reader, I’m still excited to be, and that keeps me alive as an author.”
Published by Alfaguara, ‘The Italian’ travels to the years 1942 and 1943, when Italian combat divers attacked fourteen Allied ships in Gibraltar and the Bay of Algeciras. One of those divers will be helped by a young bookseller, and this action will change both their lives.
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