“Mara Faye Lethem: I’ve been translating your work, off and on, for more than a decade now. So my experience in translating you gives me a comfort level, and confidence that is a wonderful foundation. In the first draft I have to sort of dissect the book only to later reconstruct it. The different voices should come through if the author has done their job. This book is itself something of a reconstruction, and has a quite complex structure. How organic was that? Or did you have it all mapped out?
PP: It often happens that the end of a book isn’t the last part its author has written, which is sometimes the beginning, especially in fragmentary narratives like mine. I proceed consecutively, however, even though that might not be apparent at first glance: I usually start with a question and go from there, but in the case of Don’t Shed Your Tears I had several questions: What led art to become politics throughout the 20th century, and politics to become crime, as happened over and over again?” [Sigue leyendo]
LitHub (Estados Unidos), mayo de 2020.