“A Culinary Manual for Sad Women” is a book in which you have given advice and unusual recipes to help sad women, what came to your mind when you first thought of this idea?
There are many inspirations which I have drawn from real life or from reading other works such as those of Julio Cortázar that I had read and forgotten, but that a friend reminded me of.
For the title, a book by Max Beerbohm translated into Italian, “Storie fantastiche per uomini stanchi” or “Fantastic Stories for Tired Men” gave me inspiration, as well as “Ovid’s The Art of Loving”.
But above all, it was the sadness of my mother and my sisters after the murder of my father that inspired me. And the circumstance of being locked up in the house during a long convalescence. I combined all these elements together which resulted in this book.
“Oblivion” is a memoir you wrote 20 years after your father was murdered by Colombian paramilitaries in 1987.
Why did you decide to write a book recalling this painful experience? Could you walk us through the emotions that went behind writing this book? Did writing about it help ease your pain?
I didn't write the book hoping that it would ease my pain. It wasn't intended to be a cathartic book. Its initial purpose was very simple: for my children to know and understand the grandfather that Colombian violence had robbed them of knowing and to help my children understand some of my deepest fears and craziest neuroses.
For a long time, I tried to write my father's story with my most instinctive resource: imagination and fiction. In some of my earlier novels, there was sometimes a doctor who was murdered, but it never seemed to me that these fictional characters did justice to the real person.
One day I finally understood that I had to tell his story in a very direct way, in the simple language of my house, in the family lexicon, as Natalia Ginzburg would say, and without writing anything that was not true. It had to be a completely true, testimonial.
I did, however, allow space for other people's memories (those of my father's friends, disciples or relatives) as if they were my own memories. That was the only fiction — an exaggeration of my memory because I don't have a good memory. I forget almost everything.
The fact is that, although the intention of the book was not to heal me, after having written it, I think I have become a much more serene and mature person than before. Without intending it, I stopped feeling resentment, anger, and desire for revenge. I finally made peace with my past. Art produces profound effects on the mind.
“Oblivion” has been adapted into a feature film by the Spanish Oscar-winning director Fernando Trueba. It won the Goya Award 2021 for Best Ibero-American Film. Was it difficult to watch your memories on the screen?
It is a strange and unreal experience, but at the same time, it was wonderful.
First, you live through something, then, 20 years later, you try to hold onto it in a book, another 15 years go by, and that book (and that experience) becomes a movie, with all the brutal realism that comes with audiovisual language.
And everything is and is not, at the same time. It's like going crazy — like no longer being able to distinguish between a memory and fiction. Sometimes I don't know if I remember my father. I mix up his features with those of Javier Cámara, the actor who portrayed him.
Movies are more glamorous than life. Sometimes, I feel like I would rather have been like the actor who played me.
It's hard and strange but also very beautiful. I am grateful that I lived through this experience and also for reliving it through an aesthetic experience on screen. Turning horror into beauty was one of my father's deepest drives.
