everyone who has asked me for these essays, articles and stories, as most likely without their requests I wouldn’t have written them, since the novel occupies my entire head, it colonises me.
Day Planner
12:30 International Author of the Day: In Conversation with Claudia Piñeiro
Main Stage Claudia Piñeiro was born just outside Buenos Aries in 1960. After a career in print and broadcast journalism, she published her first novel, Tuya, in 2003, released in English six years later as All Yours (Bitter Lemon). She has gone on to write more than a dozen books and several works for the stage and screen. Piñeiro has won a number of Argentine and international literary awards, and she and translator Frances Riddle were shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize with Elena Knows (Charco). Piñeiro is the most-translated living Argentine author. She will be interviewed at today’s fair by BBC radio producer Andrea Kidd.
Every day the president has someone to insult. But there is no alternative to resisting and opposing these attacks. What we are living through is neo-fascism
Your most recent translator into English and co-finalist for the Booker International Prize, Frances Riddle, lives in Buenos Aires. I’m curious to know if you work closely. I’ve been translated into 33 languages, and of all the translators I’ve had, Frances was the one who asked me the fewest questions. In fact, for Elena Knows she didn’t ask me anything at all. I think the fact that she lives here, with an Argentinian partner and children, means she is familiar with the language in all its everyday, local associations. Sometimes translators can have a sophisticated understanding of a language, but be unaware of local variations, such as a reference to a brand or product that is part of our everyday lives, or they fail to fully grasp all the subtleties of the humour, which is something so particular to each country. That isn’t a problem in Frances’ case because she is one of us. I think it’s an enormous benefit that she lives in the same city, because in my novels the society and the city are characters in themselves. She knows these streets, these restaurants, the buses, the metro, the smell of the city.
You’ve found success with adaptations: Elena Knows is on Netflix, as is Thursday Night Widows (as Thursday's Widows). Has this helped you to expand your profile internationally? I’m a bit dubious about it. I’ve asked my publishers, and they say that sometimes films and series increase sales for certain authors, sometimes they don’t. I don’t know how many people watch a movie or a series and then go looking for the book it’s based on. I do think it helps to have the author’s name in circulation and ringing a bell for people in parts of the world where previously no one knew you. When a book comes out, it takes a long time to reach different countries. You need to sign the contracts, translate the books, wait for the publisher to decide it’s the right moment. On the other hand, when I wrote the series The Kingdom for Netflix, on the day it was released people could watch what I had written in 190 countries. I was really struck by the awareness of this simultaneity.
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There are strongly feminist themes in your books, and you are a feminist activist, which must make president Javier Milei’s hard-right government hard to swallow. How are you facing up to the current political climate? I believe that, like so many other women and men, I am part of the resistance. We resist each attack by the president, attacks that come daily and range from minor insults to unacceptable outrages. The president of my country has attacked women, culture, artists, journalists, the LGTBI+ community, transgen- der people, university students, scientists, and so on and so on. In response to all his attacks I have spoken
out strongly, online, in public interviews and, above all, on the streets, marching to repudiate his attacks. Last year, faced with an attempt to censure
certain novels, we organised a collective reading of those books. At that event we read works by 270 writers in a crowded theatre, with people outside on the street following the reading on a giant screen. Trying to justify its censorship, the government was arguing for the immorality of certain books that the officials themselves had not read, so we responded in the most effective way possible: by reading. It is exhausting because there is a new
attack every day, a new violence. Every day the president has someone to insult. But there is no alternative to resisting and opposing these attacks. The price we pay is not trivial; digital violence comes in capital letters. It’s always been this way with fascism. What we are living through is neo-fascism, even if the government doesn’t like that word.
What are you working on right now? And, for English speakers, is there a new translation in the works? In May a new novel comes out, called La Muerte Ajena (The Death of Others). I’m very happy with it. Once again it is a character-driven novel that someone will call a crime novel (ha!). It’s the story of two sisters who don’t know each other. One is a journalist; the other is a sex worker
who falls from an apartment building. The journalist confronts this situation, and a number of conflicts arise from the accident that she herself reports on for her radio programme. The novel works with this conflic- tive relationship but also asks questions about the sexuality of power today. As for adaptations, this year Las maldiciones
(The Curses) is coming out as a three-part mini-series on Netflix. Meanwhile, Time of the Flies is in post-production, also for Netflix. And Amazon Prime has green-lit the filming of a series based on Cathedrals.
Piñeiro’s answers were translated from the Spanish by Carolina Orloff
London Book Fair
Interview
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