Photography. Courtesy of Olga Romay.
Olga Romay Pereira, born in Lugo, is a writer of historical novel and has published titles such as The senator's children, Pericles the first citizen y The chess player. His latest novel is When we were gods. Grant me this interview I thank you very much for your time and kindness.
Interview with Olga Romay Pereira
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
OLGA ROMAY PEREIRA: Around the world in eighty daysby Jules Verne. It was part of a collection of illustrated Bruguera. The characters were drawn in the song and the pages had text on the left and comic on the right.
The first story I wrote was a short story, it was called Ten percent and it was about a man who sold his soul to the devil, who got him everything he wanted, always taking a percentage of the profits. I think I've lost it, it wasn't worth it.
- AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
ORP: The leopard of Lampedusa. It was my first contact with high literature. Although I read it when I was fifteen, I still remember the plot, some emblematic phrases and the characters. I have not wanted to read it again, not even when I went to Sicily. It's better this way, you don't have to break the magic.
- AL: Who is your favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
ORP: Hispanics would gladly read again Vargas Llosa, Unamuno, Michael Delibes and Juan Marse. Americans to Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Auster and Jack London. Germans to Tomas Man and Herman Hesse. Italians to Ítalo Calvino and French to Proust, Flaubert already amélie Nothomb, although I think it counts as Belgian but writes in French.
In historical: Leon Arsenal, Luis Villalon y Emilio lara.
Although if I had to take a book to a desert island, the best is always the History de Herodotus.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
Count Belisarius of Robert Graves.
- AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?
None, I write anywhere where I can put my laptop.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
In Myself office after nap.
- AL: What do we find in your novel When we were gods?
ORP: The novel begins with the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon, his general Ptolemy steals the corpse and takes it to bury in Egypt. There a dazzling world awaits you, a culture clash between the Hellenistic world and the ancient culture of the Nile country that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.
The novel is set in two parallel worlds: Babylon and Egypt. In Babylon the Empire of Alexander is dissolved and in Egypt the new governor Ptolemy is expected.
En Babylon the characters live in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar or in the Darius, among bureaucrats, the harem, eunuchs, and intrigues of Alexander's widows. On Egypt the reader will delve into Slash in the temple of Karnak, the city of Memphis and will assist in the construction of Alexandria.
In the Nile country, the protagonists are priests who live in Karnak and possess a spiritual halo that Macedonians lack. The world Macedonian He is a warrior, ambitious and dominated by former generals of Alexander.
And intertwining in the plot appears a colorful fan of of: Thais, the hetaira of Ptolemy, Artakama, his Persian wife, Roxanne, Alexander's widow, Eurydice, the political wife of Ptolemy and Myrtle, the Macedonian mistress.
Both framesthe Babylonian and the Egyptian, converge when General Ptolemy arrives in the Nile country. It is then that the Macedonian has to learn to govern and adapt to the culture and customs of Egypt.
- AL: Any other genres that you like besides the historical novel?
ORP: I am very arctic, I belong to two reading clubs and one of art, I let myself be advised by the proposals of my colleagues. I think it's better this way, this way I read books that I would never have chosen in a bookstore. It is a fantastic experience, I recommend it to everyone.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
ORP: I'm reading Tomorrow freedom by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. Now I write about a real character: the daughter of a roman emperor. I prefer not to reveal who it is.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?
It is a market flooded with books and with dwindling readers. A paradox occurs: the reader now wants to be a writer, many believe that they can improve or, at least. match your favorite writers. The emergence of writers brings the consequence that the editorials they look flooded with manuscripts. And, on the other hand, the Internet is full of writers who access the desktop publishing.
Publishers have entered a perverse spiral: every month they release news, overwhelm bookstores with thousands of books that some do not get to be more than a month on the shelves. The Libreros they can no longer recommend books because they are unable to read at such speed. They have to trust reviews, blogs, critics and their instincts.
The fight to occupy the space in the first linear is uneven, the small publishers cannot get so many novelties and they are placed in the second row. The books rotate in the shop windows of bookstores like the clothes in a window of a fashion store, if one returns two months later to look for that book that he has looked at, it is most likely that it is not there.
With such a panorama, writers we are condemned to be the broken toys of this industry, the most fragile part: you have to write and write and write, always be on the line of news, and then you have to be on the networks. There is no more word of mouth, only social networks. Crazy. Have visibility or die.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to stay with something positive?
ORP: I I have always lived in crisis. I joined the publishing world when sales plummeted, everything that was digitized was pirated and readers went to watch series on the platforms. I have not lived the holidays of the nineties, nor the great editions, nor have I seen a colorful range of publishers where to offer my novels.
As always I have swam among sharksI'm not nostalgic and small achievements are victories for me. As they say in football: game by game. I assume that I am still in the learning phase, I do not run out of ideas and it amuses me to write.
We have done something wrong to make readers flee. You can't write like fifty years ago, or even like ten years ago. A reader if he gets bored does not go beyond page ten, the novels already have to start and fight against the mobile phone, the TV and the computer, readers are distracted by anything, we are scattered. I also think publishers should take some of the blame. Perhaps the reader is still there, but he is not offered what he wants.
The cultural world is a shrinking pool full of tadpoles, they end up eating each other, there is no space. In the end the inevitable will happen: the reading will be a stronghold of minorities, the comics will occupy more and more importance, the books will be thinner, the writers more mediatic and the smaller editions.
The positive: there are still books for all tastes, honest critics, and courageous publishers.