Photography courtesy of the author: (c)Nika Jiménez.
Charles Fidalgo He is from Leon and writes novels and stories, which have won some relevant awards. Among others, he has published The Helmand Hole, The White Shadow, Black September or Stuka. His latest title on the market is The dance of fire. In this interview He tells us about her and many other topics from his career as a writer. I thank him very much for the time and kindness he has dedicated.
Carlos Fidalgo Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled The dance of fire. What do you tell us in it?
CARLOS FIDALGO: The dance of fire is a unusual love story and at the same time a ghost story hidden inside a historical novel where, as the phrase that heads the narrative says, half of the lies he tells are true.
It is set in Madrid before and after the Civil War and narrates the encounters and disagreements of the aspiring photographer Vicente Yebra and the enigmatic student at the Amalia Quiroga Conservatory over 18 years (between 1935 and 1953) and in settings ranging from the first women's clubs of the last years of the Second Republic, such as the Lyceum Club of the House of the Seven Chimneys, to the most rogue nights of a city that shook off the misery of the war in the early fifties in places like Chicote, Pasapoga, on Gran Vía, the missing Hotel Florida, or the fascinating Café Barbieri in Lavapiés, with its chipped mirrors.
Setting and editing
El impossible love Lorca and Dalí, the triangle of lust, love and jealousy formed by Ava Gadner, Frank Sinatra and the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, or the adventures of the North American reporter Virgina Cowles in Madrid besieged by war are intertwined with the mystery plot around Amalia Quiroga. The Torre del Bierzo railway accident, which left one hundred dead burned in a tunnel in 1944, the dreamscape of Mondoñedo and the mermaids in Álvaro Cunqueiro's stories are also part of the story, a dizzying intrigue that follows the rhythm of the Sweetheart love of Falla and his Fire Ritual Dance, relieved by the summer wind (summer wind) by Sinatra.
However The dance of fire, edited by La Esfera de los Libros, has almost overlapped with the edition of The devil's fingersa novel of linked stories about the origins of the rock and roll which has just arrived in bookstores in an edition illustrated by the Peruvian artist Daniela de los Ríos in the Mueve Tu Lengua publishing house. The devil's fingers digs into the dark origins of rock and roll, the emergence of Elvis Presley and Beatles, the energy of Janis Joplin and the tragedy of Billie Holiday, or the mysticism of The Doors. And all from an old blues legend, that of guitarist Robert Johnson, the grandfather of rock, who waited for the devil at midnight at a crossroads to turn him into a virtuoso.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
CF: As a child I loved the novels of Jules Verne and Emilio Salgari or the saga of The five by Enid Blyton. Adventure novels stimulated me.
Writers and customs
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
CF: Juan Rulfo and his novel Pedro Paramo. Julio Llamazares, with The yellow rainla. Eduardo Mendoza with The verdict on the Savolta case y The city of prodigies. Gabriel García Márquez, Borges... Any novel by Irene Nemirovsky. But also classics from the 19th century, Dickens, Melville, bronte...
- AL: What character would you have liked to meet and create?
CF: I would have liked to create capital Ahab, Moby Dick. But I don't think I would have liked to meet him if he had been real. Yes, I would have liked to attend one of Elvis Presley's first concerts, back in '56, when he was all energy.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
CF: Disconnect from work with other fiction. The quickest thing is a good movie.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
CF:Dafter midnight. At a crossroads... And now is when I wink.
- AL: What genres do you like?
CF: Mix genres in my novels. I am satisfied when what I write transcends those labels. But I have the habit, not the guilty pleasure, of buying western novels, not the newsstand ones, but those published by Valdemar in the Frontera collection, by great literary authors who have set stories in those open landscapes.
Carlos Fidalgo Current outlook
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
CF: I'm reading The secrets of Heap House, by Edward Carey. I am interested in youth literature. I wouldn't mind writing a story for those readers. And I have in my head a story which can function as a prequel to Moby Dick and The dance of fire at once.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is?
CF: Large commercial publishers flee from literature, which seems like a banned word for some editors, and they choose to publish narrative 'goodies' that have large numbers of readers, but that are forgotten as soon as the book covers are closed. And good literature, stories that transcend, don't have to be boring. I am in that war.
- AL: How are you handling the current moment we live in?
CF: I write stories to escape from reality. Although the stories I write are, many times, far from idealizing the reality they talk about.