Photography: Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta website.
Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta He is from Madrid in the 60s. He graduated in Geography and History from the Autonomous University of Madrid and worked as archaeologist, bookcase, editor and carpenter. And in his free time write. He has published several novels and written many articles, stories and essays about history and nature. Furthermore, he intervenes in workshops reading and writing and gives conferences about history and literature. Among his best-known titles are ink thieves and his latest novel is Your worst enemy. In this interview He tells us about his career and I thank him very much for his time and kindness.
Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled Your worst enemy. What do you tell us in it?
ALFONSO MATEO-SAGASTA: Su worst enemy is a reworking of a short novel that I wrote on request in 2010 for teaching Spanish and which was titled The captive poet. I liked the story a lot and, when I recovered the rights, I decided to give it another spin, introducing a more precise vocabulary, some more chapters to round out the story, and a certain dose of irony. Such changes, and the fact that it had only circulated in the language teaching market, encouraged me to change the title as if it were a new work, at least that's how I see it. Although what really gives the book its status are the wonderful illustrations by María Espejo, drawings in silhouette, or in shadow, that wonderfully capture the spirit and atmosphere of the time.
The theme is Cervantine, and could be defined as a prequel to my novel ink thieves, first of the series by Isidoro Montemayor (the others are The cabinet of wonders y The kingdom of men without love). Is about arrival in Madrid in 1605 of Jerónimo de Pasamonte, an old soldier who goes to the town in search of a publisher for his memoirs and who in a still life listens to a chapter of the Quijote, the new fashion book, where he is talked about in a derogatory way. From there, their adventures and misadventures They serve as a guide to immerse ourselves in the Madrid of the Austrias, its greatness and its miseries, and in the always surprising world of literature of the Golden Age and its mysteries.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
AMS: When I was a kid I really liked books by Salgari. My favorite character was Yanez de Gomera, the Portuguese companion and friend of Sandokan, but I hold with special emotion my first reading of the PC Wren trilogy: Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur and Beau ideal. Curiously, I think those novels sparked my interest in Arab world, hence I studied Medieval History and then my first novel took place in the XNUMXth century, at the height of the caliphate boom in the Iberian Peninsula. Your title is the smell of spices.
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
AMS: I don't have a main writer, and I admire so many that it would be useless to try to list them. Although it is true that Cervantes It is the one I have read the most and the one I have worked on the most.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
WSA: Antonio José Bolívar Proaño, protagonist of An old man who read love novels, by Luis Sepúlveda.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
AMS: No, the truth is that I have no hobbies beyond having a computer, paper and pen. I read anywhere, and I prefer my office to write, although I also correct anywhere later.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
AMS: I impose a kind of office hours, morning and afternoon, between writing and reading. Sometimes things go better in the mornings, but not always.
Panorama and current events
- AL: You mainly cultivate historical novels. Are there other genres that you like?
AMS: I like to think that I try to do literature in general, although it is true that most of my stories take place in other times. Having an exotic environment, and when I say exotic I mean different from the one the reader knows, is a good tool to cultivate fiction, but the spirit of the novel is in the characters, not in the framework in which their stories develop. lives. In any case, I like to vary.
In fact, I have published a novel by science fiction (The faces of the tiger), A test from nature (Dealing with sharks with Karlos Simón) and a story infant (Mangata) with illustrations by Emilia Fernández de Navarrete, apart, of course, from a story on ontology of history, as The opposition, and a narrative essay, Nation. In the latter I describe in scenes the fall of the Catholic Monarchy since 1808 and the birth of Spain in 1837. For me, History, with a capital letter, is a very special literary genre.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
AMS: I have been reviewing the American edition of Nation, edited by the Fondo de cultura Económica, which I presented in October in Mexico (the Spanish one is from the Kingdom of Cordelia). As for reading, I just read a very interesting book by Anselmo Suarez and Romero entitled Francisco, ingenuity or the delights of the countryside, a shocking novel about slavery in Cuba written in 1839, which I had not heard about when I wrote bad leaf.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is in general?
AMS: I suppose well, judging by everything that is published, it is a shame that there are no readers for so many books. What is wrong, and always has been, is the policy on the promotion of reading, and in general cultural and educational. Unfortunately in Spain very little is read.
- AL: How are you handling the current moment we live in?
AMS: If you mean politically, by far interest and curiosity; socially, with esperanza; personally, with tranquility and literary, with delusion. Anyway, we'll see.