Pascual Perea (Bilbao, 1960) had always wanted to write about a time jumpbut without using the classic science fiction tools. «It seems to me that there is a tacit agreement between the author and the reader in that genre: one is invented any way of traveling to the future and the other accepts it. But I wanted it to be plausible, to make sense within reality, ”he explains to ABC. He found the solution in Amnesia and ‘The Astronaut’ (Espasa), Ulises wakes up one morning in the hospital after suffering an accident without remembering anything lived during the last thirty years.
According to his memories, the previous night he was celebrating his right -to -law in Deust disappearance of a girl And also what kind of person has become his fifty years, the antipodes of what he had imagined. His own odyssey begins. «The character feels transplanted to another body, at another time. He does not recognize himself. How is it possible that your youngest ‘I’ has become what it is now? When did you take the wrong path? ”Says Perea.
The author is weaving in ‘The Astronaut’ a Existential Thriller in which Ulysses has to discover against clock if he is a murderer. “I liked the idea that it was at the same time investigator, suspect and victim,” says Perea. «You have to rebuild your life from the traces that others have left over it. And he doesn’t always like what he finds ». The name of the protagonist, of course, is no accident. «Ulysses makes a trip back to his own Ithaca, which is his identity. He faces an unknown world and has to find out if he is the hero or the villain of his history ».
To reflect that memory and identity search, Perea uses a disturbing fact: the human body renews all its cells every 30 years. «The Ulysses that wakes up is literally another person. And that served me to reinforce the idea that identity is more fragile of what we believe ».
Bilbao, 1991
The same seems to happen with the world around him. Bilbao has changed. Its ‘Skyline’ is no longer the same, cranes have given way to an iconic museum and the city, before mired in the industrial crisis, is now a magnet for tourists. Ulysses discovers it when leaving the hospital. With the head put into mode ‘Back to the future’The protagonist cannot help feeling a bit disappointed when he doesn’t see flying cars. “The changes that have occurred are less colorful, but probably more transcendent,” Perea reflects. «The mobile, for example, has brought us the entire universe at hand, but has also isolated us. You go to the subway and see everyone is self -absorbed on the screen. That did not happen before.
Perea does not choose 1991 by chance. «It was the year of the great change for Spain, with the Expo and the Olympic Games, and for the world, with the fall of the USSR. Also for Bilbao, who was plunged into a Huge industrial and identity crisis. The one now has nothing to do. Of being a ugly and dirty city, to become a glitter postcard. The Guggenheim miracle is that. All that gave me a lot of play and served me to reflect the bewilderment of the protagonist ».
There is also an echo of ETA violence that marked those years. «The last day Ulysses remembers is that of the Vic attacks. And, when he hears a conversation in a bar about it, someone says: ‘Well, they have looked for it.’ That was the reality of the time. And I was interested in showing how the passage of time can erase such hard memories, ”says the writer.
And, in the key to the present, the immigration. Perea draws some margins of the society in which Ulysses finds shelter in her flight «It seemed to me even poetic. «He is a fugitive that has nothing or anyone, and is welcomed by those who have nothing. They are the most dispossessed, but also those that retain the most human values ». In the novel, this shock of realities not only offers a physical refuge, but also a way for its own reconstruction. «The people who have suffered the most are those who retain an authenticity that others have lost,” the author reflects.
Pascual Perea is not a newcomer to letters. For 35 years he exercised the Journalism in ‘El Correo’covering all kinds of news and learning, as he says, “the job of writing.” However, there came a time when he felt he had completed a cycle. «Journalism is an exciting profession, but also very unpacking. I was offered the opportunity to retire a little before of the time and I wanted to take advantage of it to try something new, something more creative, ”he says.
Thus his facet of novelist was born. First with ‘The laws of chance’, then with ‘the curse of the mirror’, and now with ‘the astronaut’, which has allowed him to explore not only social changes, but also the most intimate transformations of the human being. And the trip does not end here: «I will close the trilogy that I started with my first two novels. I am in a hurry, I will do it at my rhythm. In the end, this is a hobby, but one that I enjoy very much ».
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