“The Pope who has just died was superforted and the Church, a medieval institution”

In an increasingly overturned world towards the immediate and the superficial, Juan José Millás challenge us again with something deeply uncomfortable: think. His new bookThat fool is going to write a novel (Editorial Alfaguara), which See Light on May 8, It is not just a literary work, it is an exercise of provocative introspection on issues that many would prefer to avoid, such as religion, guilt or what there is (or there is not) after death.

With his ironic style and his usual ability to tear the everyday until he is left in living flesh, Millás enters territories that touch the metaphysical while still anchored in the most rough reality. He does, as always, from a critical, lucid and very personal look. And it makes it clear from the beginning: there are no hot cloths or friendly speeches. The Church, for example, does not save itself from its verbal scalpel. “It is a medieval institution,” he says bluntly in an interview with Europa press. And he does not stop there: he questions the debates about whether the next Pope will be conservative or progressive with a single word: “Artificial”

“The same gives me a little. These debates among themselves It was a super -reasons and the church, a medieval institution. So that entertaining ourselves in debates about supposed progressisms is absurd talking about an institution that is in the Middle Ages in many aspects, “he criticizes. political dynamiteand think of what everyone thinks in recent months: the president of the United States, since he believes that “Humanity is in danger with Donald Trump.”

But beyond the statements that can turn on holders, the interesting thing about the book is in its ability to make you look in. What place occupies guilt in our lives? Why do we continue to drag beliefs that no longer represent us? What happens when we stop believing, but we don’t stop feeling guilty?

That fool is going to write a novel It is not a comfortable book. And that is exactly what makes it necessary. Millás reminds us that, in the middle of the emotional well -being, sometimes you have to sit down to talk with our contradictions, with our moral and spiritual inheritances, although they bother. Especially if they bother.