Yves de Villegas: «Making a person travel through the pages of a book is crazy»ED
This has nothing to do with what he did before…
No, nothing… It’s like comparing day and night [sonríe]. My previous two books were for young people, this one was not. The naked salamander had been inside my head for a few years and I have poured a lot of knowledge about Japanese social culture into it. It is a dark plot that begins in some public baths in Kyoto.
Yes, it looks like it’s not for a children’s audience?
No, it is not [ja,ja,ja]… Alice is a Westerner who meets a seductive tattooed Japanese woman… That is something that in that country is only reserved for members of the Yakuza. The beginning of the book is soft and erotic, but it transforms as the mafia takes control. In some way the relationship that the women maintain changes and everything leads to a scenario that would fit in a script in the style of With Death on His Heels.
In the end, the years spent in Asia have paid off very well, right?
I have squeezed them pretty well [Yves de Villegas trabajó durante mucho tiempo como responsable de exportaciones de bienes de equipo]… I was dedicated to the purchase of industrial machinery in Asian countries financed with Spanish funds. I spent a few years in China, India, Japan, Thailand…
Shouldn’t selling machines to countries that boast high industrial development be easy?
Doing this type of operation in Singapore, Taiwan or many Japanese cities was not easy, but Asia is very large and when an opportunity is closed in one place, another avenue opens in Bangladesh, New Delhi or Bangkok… If what What you want is to do business with a Chinese, you have to know how they live, at least get as close as you can to their way of thinking. I already told you that something like this is not easy to achieve. I had to ask a lot of questions to try to decipher his mind… Some of the things I learned are in the novel and that’s what made me dedicate it to two of my bosses in the Chinese employers’ association, both deceased, and to an agent with whom I closed several businesses in Vietnam, who also does not live…
Did you experience the pandemic there?
No, when the health crisis broke out in China I had already returned to Spain. Now I am a university professor…
A teacher with a vocation as a writer?
Or a storyteller [pausa ]. I love to read and at home there has always been a good relationship with literature [su esposa es autora de más de un centenar de títulos orientados al público infantil]. For more than 20 years I had my sights set on telling a story of this profile.
Did he have it between his eyebrows?
Yes, more or less. So I was already clear that I wanted to tell in a thriller the surprises that I came across along the way on my work trips. I knew that everything had to be dark and that I only needed to organize it, and also some time to write it.
Was it all a matter of time?
It’s something important when you really want to write something that has caused you some amazement… If a story gets stuck in your head, you have to find time to write it.
What are your feelings?
There is a sense of fun and anticipation. People who have read The Naked Salamander (NdeNovela) tell me that they have found a kind of wide-open window to an unknown culture.
Are there plans to return to children’s literature?
I think it’s time to continue my path in the world of literature for adults without leaving aside the possibility of doing something more specific for a children’s audience… I like both fields, but I am not a professional writer, at least not until now. now.
Once inside the territory of the Japanese mafia, it seems more complicated to return to a somewhat more youthful setting…
Do not believe [vuelve a reír]… The youth theme appeals to me a lot and at home there are plenty of arguments to continue very close to that literary genre.
Despite pointing out that “for now you don’t feel like a professional writer,” I don’t know if your plans are to stay in this profession?
If we analyze it as a possible life project, it would be the best thing that could happen to me, but this world is difficult. Finding a space in the midst of the avalanche of books that come out every year is a complicated dream. Now I only write to bring out something that is inside me, not as a way to solve my finances… I have learned to enjoy writing and the idea is to continue telling these types of stories without pressure. If the flute plays, the better, but the important thing is to have something to tell others. Making a person travel through the pages of a book is crazy.
There are writers who claim that problems appear when you lose the ability to enjoy the creative process.
Maybe, but I don’t feel that pressure yet. I hope I can feel it one day because that would mean that she would be fulfilling a dream. The feeling of being told “we liked it, we want more” has to be something wonderful.
Sell us the book?
It is a story in which strange and dangerous things begin to happen to the protagonist, a novel where Japanese culture floods everything: honor, tradition, sensuality, the Yakuza (mafia), eroticism, the LGTBI universe. ..Businesses are closed in ryokans [lugares de retiro o apartados de las grandes urbes] and the risk does not stop growing until a story full of mystery explodes. I’m a big fan of Michel Houellebecq and Ferdinand Célice… That’s a good clue for what’s in store for readers.
