The Argentine author Eduardo Sacheri presented his latest novel titled The two of us in the storm. At the Bogotá Book Fair 2024, Noticias Caracol spoke with him about his new work.
Caracol News: The two of us in the storm It is a book that takes place in Argentina in the 70s, predictadura, and where what happens to two young guerrillas and the political situation of the country is explored. There is a deep reflection on the concept of people. For you in the work, what is the town?
Eduardo Sacheri: “It’s probably a little bit of everything. “Those young Argentine guerrillas feel at the forefront of the people, the embodiment of the best of the people, I think that is the moral justification for daring to do what they dare to do.”
Caracol News: You portray the father of a guerrilla and there are still an amount of humanity in that character that says ‘I want my son to fail because I don’t want him to end badly.’
Eduardo Sacheri: “I liked to think that many mothers and fathers must not have shared that revolutionary hope, but rather the other way around, saying ‘I think you’re wrong, but I love you so much that I have a terrible dilemma because you are my son, I want nothing to happen to you. and I think that since you are going to fail, the only thing I hope is that they don’t kill you.’”
Caracol News: There is a quantity, let’s say, of crossed roles around the father figure very interesting in the book.
Eduardo Sacheri: “I think that this thing about how to be a son and how to be a father runs through all my books and The two of us in the storm is no exception”.
Caracol News: ¿The two of us in the storm Is it the story of two guerrillas from two different cells who come together to talk and atone for their own demons or is it the story of the father who sees his son going through the storm and both go through it from different perspectives?
Eduardo Sacheri: “It aims to be both. I believe that a violent society is always a storm.”
Caracol News: Did you think that by touching on a topic as sensitive as this, especially for Latin American societies so plagued by subversive violence, you could justify these behaviors?
Eduardo Sacheri: “I feared a double challenge from people who read this novel and said ‘of course, it is demonizing the guerrillas’, and on the other hand they would say ‘it is humanizing the guerrillas’, and I found readers of both types. It seems to me that we live in a time where there are too many people with too many certainties, so it seems to me that hesitate a little to solemnize what one thinks is fine“It’s not going to hurt us.”
