It turns out that there was a book by Liliana that we knew? This, with simplicity, almost with surprise, says Galileo Bodoc sitting at one end of a table at the Book Fair. “Liliana”, of course, is Liliana Bodoc, is the great author, known for weaving fantasy worlds where she crosses American mythologies and culture. She is the author of the saga The confines, which intertwined fantastic elements with deep themes such as identity, the fight between good and evil and the connection with the earth. The one who died surprisingly in February 2018, at the age of 59. She had just participated in the Havana Book Fair.
“One day came with a book in his handstelling my old man that a friend from Cuba had brought it,” Galileo says now, looking a little at the audience, a little at his table companions: the illustrator Sebastián Vargas, the writer Paula Bombara and the editor Laura Leibiker.
“The book was Liliana Bodoc and we were completely surprised. Honestly, huh? It turned out that there was a book by Liliana that not only did we not know, but we did not even know that she had written, much less that it had been published in Havana.”
Galileo talks about An island in timethe book that is now published in Argentina by the V&R publishing house. It’s about this: Amparo and her grandson Iván, considered by many as uninformed and imaginative, live in a contaminated area, far from the city and marginalized by technological advances. Adela, daughter of César Mégalo, a pragmatic man without poetic inclinations, is becoming a leader among her neighbors in the midst of adversity. But when an intense storm transforms the city into an isolated island, the question arises as to who has the solution to overcome the crisis: those who are governed by reason or those who listen to their hearts?
That says Galileo: “He hadn’t told us anything. We came across a book that had been published in 2013. All this happened, now she had passed away. We were in the middle of a pandemic, we had no hope that there would be any other books to publish, except for some texts, but not a novel. And it turned out to be true, there was a book called “An island in time”.
“An island” said the title and it had been published in Havana: Galileo thought it was about Cuba. But not. “In fact, the first thing I thought was ‘It must be the talk he gave at the Havana Book Fair ‘”. And no, it wasn’t. It was a novel “that Liliana had written in her privacy.”
They read it. There were surprises. Galileo said: “Reading her took us to new impacts, a book published in 2013 talked about face masks, things that she had not gone through.”
By the time the news arrived, the rights had expired: Liliana’s children decided to also publish it in Argentina.
“I want to talk about the challenge of editing Liliana,” he said. Laura Leibiker. “I had the opportunity: her work with her was extraordinary. Like good authors there was a dialogue, she accepted, she discussed, she thought, she brought you a solution ten thousand times better than any you had thought of… she always responded that the text still had a lot of work to do. She never said ‘that’s it, don’t call me again.’”
Leibiker just published an unpublished text by Bodoc. Is called The snot of fury, was published by Siglo XXI and there, the author tells of her first day of fury, at the age of 9. Starts strong: “Fury, as a coin, has two sides: it can be a whip on the greed of merchants, it can be kicked against the ribs of the fallen. Fury, like the mask it is, has two grimaces; that of shame and that of God.”
But now Leibiker is not talking about that book, he is talking about An island.. And choose some characters: “In this case I’ll stick with the grandmotherswith how grandmothers in the work of Liliana They are always characters that advance the story, even if they are not always protagonists. The archetypal grandmother is not Liliana’s grandmother. Here they are able to play, to build other roads with their grandchildren.”
Galileo Listen, here she recognizes something, she intervenes: “Lili had super simple dreams, she wanted to be a grandmother with long braids telling stories to her grandchildren.” A gust crosses the room, it is the pain for the injustice of an early death.
“Liliana puts together a story that has a tone between fairy tales and sacred writing,” says the illustrator Sebastian Vargas. “There is a huge storm that produces a flood and at the same time that island on which there are survivors is also an island made of words. It is a story that travels in time.”
“Amparo reads her grandson Iván a story and then they have to act through the tragedy that surrounds them and confront the arrogance of the powerful. This confrontation is not always direct, she sometimes faces it with particular wisdom. There is also the contempt of the powerful, towards other people and towards nature.”
Galileo listen and process. What Vargas said made him think that “in this book that talks about a kind of dystopian future, there are no superheroes who are going to save us from tragedy, there is a grandmother, a special child, a poet.”
Bombaraone of the leading voices in contemporary children’s literature brings his talks with Bodoc. “With Lili we often talk about how everything is linked to everything, nature is linked to us because we are other animals.”
And then Bombara tells something that describes the head of Liliana Bodoc: “He told me: ‘We who write, what do we write with? Do we take the pen like a potter making a clay pot and having people drink water from it or we take it as a jeweler, to make a jewel and for the person to wear it? What do we want to do with writing?’ Imagine my head when I left there, right?”
The talk continues, talking about the relationship with nature, children, how Bodoc put a question mark on “adultcentrism” and whether we adults let the children be free.
Afternoon of affection and nostalgia. AND Liliana Bodoc present, in his work.
Photos: Courtesy FEL
