The Bookseller – Features – Q&A: Claudia Piñeiro
You are often described as a crime writer, which I find a little strange, as you don’t write conventional mysteries.
I don’t define myself as a writer of crime fiction, or detective stories, or indeed noir. I feel I am simply a novelist, though I also write short fiction, theatre and other kinds of texts. But the sea I’m most comfortable swimming in is the novel. And in these novels, which are basically about characters and their internal conflicts, sometimes there appears a death, a mystery, a search for truth, and so people like to put a stamp on it and call it crime fiction.
To a greater or lesser degree, I do use elements from crime fiction, but the resulting novel is anything but. I don’t think you could call Elena Knows a crime novel, even though the main character’s quest is to find out who killed her daughter. The reader knows what happened long before Elena does. And the narrative and the suspense of the book take a different path. The only novel of mine that I see as fitting into the genre is Betibú. In all the others, aspects of the crime genre are mixed in with the writing without that making it a noir.
In any case, when someone says this I don’t protest or try to explain that they’re wrong. I’m not offended by this reading, as some others are. On the contrary, I dislike the prejudice there is towards genre fiction. Fortunately, things are changing, but there was a time when a genre novel, whether crime, horror, or science fiction, felt excluded from mainstream literary prizes, regardless of how well it was written, but simply because genre fiction was considered less serious. I don’t repudiate noir fiction, but if someone comes to one of my books looking for a crime novel, they will find something else, and perhaps even be disappointed. Some readers complain that in some of my novels the ending is left open. I don’t think that’s true; I think the reader is given what they need to understand the ending, but it’s true that I don’t fully develop it in the way that crime novels do so that no one is left in any doubt about who killed them and why. For me, the important answers are of a different kind.
I wonder how you go about shaping the story. Do you begin with the plot, the characters, or even with a specific scene?
I always start out with an image. This image, which has something of the quality of a dream, stays in my head for a while until the characters begin to move around, to express their conflicts. Only then do I start to think about who they are, where they come from, why they’re there. We could say that this image is a scene. It might be the first scene in the novel, or the last, or in the middle – or not there at all. Because what follows is the development of the characters. The plot is nothing more than an instrument to allow me to understand who these characters are. Although, of course, I do treat the plot with care and try to manage the suspense in such a way that the reader will want to follow [the characters] along the path they take.
Every day the Argentina president has someone to insult. But there is no alternative to resisting and opposing these attacks. What we are living through is neo-fascism
As someone who writes across multiple forms, do you always begin a project knowing what form it will take?
My natural home in writing is the novel. The other texts emerged as a result of specific circumstances. I began to study playwriting because I wanted to perfect how my characters speak. Theatre is the closest thing to poetry, and it gives me a freedom I don’t have in the stories I tell that are much closer to reality. I love theatre, both going to the theatre and reading plays. The stories and the essays are the result of commissions. I am grateful to everyone who has asked me for these essays, articles and stories, as most likely without their requests I wouldn’t have written them, since the novel occupies my entire head, it colonises me.
Continues…
Your most recent translator into English and co-finalist for the Booker International Prize, Frances Riddle, lives in Buenos Aires. I’m curious to know if you work closely.
I’ve been translated into 33 languages, and of all the translators I’ve had, Frances was the one who asked me the fewest questions. In fact, for Elena Knows she didn’t ask me anything at all. I think the fact that she lives here, with an Argentinian partner and children, means she is familiar with the language in all its everyday, local associations. Sometimes translators can have a sophisticated understanding of a language, but be unaware of local variations, such as a reference to a brand or product that is part of our everyday lives, or they fail to fully grasp all the subtleties of the humour, which is something so particular to each country. That isn’t a problem in Frances’ case because she is one of us. I think it’s an enormous benefit that she lives in the same city, because in my novels the society and the city are characters in themselves. She knows these streets, these restaurants, the buses, the metro, the smell of the city.
You’ve found success with adaptations: Elena Knows is on Netflix, as is Thursday Night Widows (as Thursday’s Widows). Has this helped you to expand your profile internationally?
I’m a bit dubious about it. I’ve asked my publishers, and they say that sometimes films and series increase sales for certain authors, sometimes they don’t. I don’t know how many people watch a movie or a series and then go looking for the book it’s based on. I do think it helps to have the author’s name in circulation and ringing a bell for people in parts of the world where previously no one knew you. When a book comes out, it takes a long time to reach different countries. You need to sign the contracts, translate the books, wait for the publisher to decide it’s the right moment. On the other hand, when I wrote the series The Kingdom for Netflix, on the day it was released people could watch what I had written in 190 countries. I was really struck by the awareness of this simultaneity.
There are strongly feminist themes in your books, and you are a feminist activist, which must make president Javier Milei’s hard-right government hard to swallow. How are you facing up to the current political climate?
I believe that, like so many other women and men, I am part of the resistance. We resist each attack by the president, attacks that come daily and range from minor insults to unacceptable outrages. The president of my country has attacked women, culture, artists, journalists, the LGTBI+ community, transgender people, university students, scientists, and so on and so on.
In response to all his attacks I have spoken out strongly, online, in public interviews and, above all, on the streets, marching to repudiate his attacks.
Last year, faced with an attempt to censure certain novels, we organised a collective reading of those books. At that event we read works by 270 writers in a crowded theatre, with people outside on the street following the reading on a giant screen. Trying to justify its censorship, the government was arguing for the immorality of certain books that the officials themselves had not read, so we responded in the most effective way possible: by reading.
It is exhausting because there is a new attack every day, a new violence. Every day the president has someone to insult. But there is no alternative to resisting and opposing these attacks. The price we pay is not trivial; digital violence comes in capital letters. It’s always been this way with fascism. What we are living through is neo-fascism, even if the government doesn’t like that word.
What are you working on right now? And, for English speakers, is there a new translation in the works?
In May a new novel comes out, called La Muerte Ajena (The Death of Others). I’m very happy with it. Once again it is a character-driven novel that someone will call a crime novel (ha!). It’s the story of two sisters who don’t know each other.
One is a journalist; the other is a sex worker who falls from an apartment building. The journalist confronts this situation, and a number of conflicts arise from the accident that she herself reports on for her radio programme. The novel works with this conflictive relationship but also asks questions about the sexuality of power today.
As for adaptations, this year Las maldiciones (The Curses) is coming out as a three-part mini-series on Netflix. Meanwhile, Time of the Flies is in post-production, also for Netflix. And Amazon Prime has green-lit the filming of a series based on Cathedrals.
Piñeiro’s answers were translated from the Spanish by Carolina Orloff
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