“Literature is good or bad, not black, historical or children’s”

“It was actually a bit of a coincidence,” he recalls. Teresa Cardona. “I worked in the library of the French Lycée in Düsseldorf and I started writing a short story with one of my children’s teachers, Eric Damien.“. The story worked so Well, it was published by the Bayard publishing house, an important international children’s literature group. “We decided to continue, but doing crime fiction, and that’s how it came out A job to finish [publicada bajo el seudónimo de Eric Todenne y de próxima traducción al español], set during the Algerian war and after Burned groundwhich is now published by Siruela“.

But Cardona (Madrid, 1973), who has returned to live in Spain after 30 years, took a liking to writing. His police series set in San Lorenzo de El Escorialstarring Spanish-German Lieutenant Karen Blecker and Brigadier Cano of the Civil Guard, It has been a breath of fresh air in the Spanish crime scene, earning it the Villanúa Rural Noir 2023 Awardand some of its, so far, three deliveries –The two sides, A relative good and The meat of the swan– has reached its sixth edition.

The world of children’s and youth literature is well-known territory for Ledicia Costas (Vigo, 1979), the only writer to obtain the Lazarillo Prize three times and winner of the National Children’s and Youth Literature in 2015. with Scarlettina, the corpse cook (Anaya). With the successful Infamy (2019) and light strokes (2022), which accumulated tens of thousands of readers, made the leap to thriller psychological with great weight of the Galician rural world, an element that stands out again in his latest novel, lambskin (Destination).

In her, in which she returns to the town of Merlothe writer establishes a game of mirrors between Catalina, a woman from a line of witches who must face the obscurantism of the last years of the Inquisitionand Lola, a 21st century woman with several life crises whose skepticism begins to shake when she comes into contact with forces she does not understand.

The corset of genders

“My transition to adult literature – a distinction that horrifies me, since it seems that depending on what you write, you have one category or another – was something very natural. I started writing when I was 10 or 11 years old, and I didn’t know that children’s literature existed. He did not distinguish beyond poetry, theater and narrative. Then, I started writing the type of books that I liked to read,” explains the author. “The evolution was consistent with my growth, but in 2019 I needed to do something more mature and I started writing Infamy to get out of my comfort zone, because I really like to experiment and try new things.”

However, he acknowledges that he continues to alternate. “I just took out lambskina novel with very dark elements, but These days the first two titles of Pimpollo, the influencer dog, are also published (Anaya), a super cute children’s story with a lot of humor. I love changing registers, I wouldn’t be able to always write the same type of book“.

Gathered by The reading on the occasion of the Madrid Book Fair, in which both have signed and which faces its last weekend, Both writers quickly sympathize and share many opinions.. For example, the fictitious corset imposed by literary labels, genres. “I don’t wonder if this is a historical novel. I love bursting the seams and breaking the frames, that each book is an opportunity to enter an alternative world and on the margins,” explains Costas.

“It’s a little frustrating to be boxed in.. In France, for example, there is a clear distinction between roman noirthose books that describe situations, whether sociocultural, political or personal, of dubious morality, and the polar, the classic policeman with a corpse and an investigation. But I think he’s a little artificial,” Cardona defends. “In the end, I think that There is only literature, there is good literature and there is bad literature. And period“.

The echoes of history

“That’s it,” exclaims Costas. “Labels like black, historical and children are, in the end, very limiting commercial ideas. It amazes me a lot when someone comes to me at a signing or a festival and tells me: ‘I don’t read crime novels.’ But what is your idea of ​​a crime novel?” “Or those who say: ‘I don’t read classics,'” Cardona intervenes. “Can Cervantes be compared to Victor Hugo? Well, don’t read it”ditch.

The new novels of both writers They are very different, but it is not difficult to find common points in them.. Yeah lambskin It takes us to the 19th century to show that many prejudices and violence against women are still active today, Burned groundIt also has a nineteenth-century part and covers many key points of the twentieth century.especially the Second World War, until reaching the present day.

That is to say, In both, the echoes that history has in our present are present.. The story of Cardona, set in a small Alsatian town, spans from 1870 to 2016 and includes a complex plot of greed and revenge in which land and a farm change hands as the region progresses in history. always between France and Germany at the risk of wars, and especially the deportation of the Jews during the Second World War.

“The most current thing about this story is the political and personal consequences of separations and the lifting of borders. The Alsatians had to, depending on the time, abandon their language and their names. First the Germans banned French in 1871, then in 1918 it was the other way around and in 1939 Germany once again took over the area,” says the writer. “The consequences for the inhabitants of the region were tremendous, and this is the germ of the book. That’s why when they ask me I say that This is a hymn to the idea of ​​Europe, of a place with a diverse community that can coexist in peace“.

absorbing universes

In that sense, the writer values ​​the memory of the Holocaust, “a fact that can never be forgotten, that must always be kept in mind. The Germans do a magnificent job of remembering everything that happened, but in France it is a somewhat forgotten period, perhaps out of shame.“, he points out. As stated in the book, even before the invasion of Paris by the Nazis, Thousands of Alsatian Jews were deported to detention camps like Gurs, in which many Spanish republicans also ended up. “And that is not something very well known, not everything happened in Dachau or Auschwitz.”

And from one genocide to another, because for Costas the witch hunt that lasted several centuries reaches that status. “Listening to Teresa I was thinking that That extermination of women in Europe and not only here was also a genocide. Depending on the sources consulted, there are more than 60,000 women, but there are no reliable records, “she says.” However, I believe that There are many parallels between the genocide of National Socialism and the genocide of women during all those centuriesthan the different inquisitions that took place in the world.” “I believe that the Holocaust is a unique event in history, but I agree that many of the persecutions, as occurs in my book, took place with the connivance of the neighbors“, adds Cardona.

Beyond the plots, another aspect of confluence between the two is their idea of ​​literature, their vision that the important thing is to tell stories. “I really like to keep my reader entertained. A book has to drag you into a completely foreign world, make you lose track of time, of where you are.. If you achieve it, it’s wonderful,” says Cardona. “I share the idea of ​​moving to another place, I really like the feeling of building a universe. in my novels I create universes so that other people, during the duration of the reading, move to live there and they don’t want to go out,” adds Costas.

And both threaten more good literature. “I have been writing fantasy all my life, and above all, fantasy of the dark side, and the supernatural.. It is already in my childhood work, and now that I have opened this door I am not going to close it. My next book will return to Merlo with a story similar to Piel de Lamb,” confesses Costas. “I’m also still in San Lorenzo, the fourth novel by Blecker and Cano is almost here. I’m raising the mortality rate there a bit, but it seems the locals, many of whom appear in my books, still don’t mind.“, jokes Cardona.