Gaea Schoeters: "Hunting an endangered animal can encourage the government to help its species"

Barcelona"This idea you've had is horrible." "I, if I were you, wouldn't write anything on this topic." "Just let it go, please." Phrases like these were what the Belgian writer Gaea Schoeters (Sint Niklaas, 1976) heard whenever she told someone about the novel project she had in mind and which has ended up being "The trophy. "It's fortunate that I didn't listen to them and ended up writing what I needed," she admits six years after the publication of the book in Flemish. The Catalan translation of the novel, by Maria Rosich and published by Empúries, is the twelfth of the more than twenty that the book already has contracted. In Germany alone, the place where it has had the most successthis story starring a white hunter who accepts a disturbing challenge, more than 150,000 copies have been sold.

Until now we had not been able to read any novel from him, although The trophy is the fifth she has published. Before debuting as a fiction author, she had made herself known in 2007 with Girls, Muslims & Motorcycles [Girls, Muslims and motorcycles]. Could we say that this book traced one of the main lines of his literary work, which always takes place far from Belgium?

— In this book I explained a motorcycle trip we took from Belgium to the western border of China and from there to Yemen. It was a way to remember the similar trip that Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Ella Maillart had made in the late 1930s. Beneath the chronicle of our own experience there was a historical element. It wasn't until 2011 that I published my first novel, Cavadors, which takes place in Berlin during the era when the Wall fell. The next was set in Italy, with a main character following in the footsteps of Caravaggio... As I speak with you, I realize for the first time that I have never written anything set in Belgium.

How is it?

— Perhaps because for me writing is entering the mind of someone who thinks in a completely different way than I do. I like to travel inside characters like that in places that don't feel like home to me.

We will soon arrive in Africa where The Trophy takes place, but first let me ask you about Sint Niklaas, the small town where you grew up. Was it a conducive environment to find your calling as a writer, or rather an obstacle?

— I think family is more important than the environment, in that aspect. I grew up in a house without a television, and I'm not that old... Every evening I saw them read books, and from very early on they told me stories. The world reached me in the form of stories. I valued it highly.

Did their parents have any connection to literature, apart from being regular readers?

— No. The mother was a teacher and the father was involved in politics, but at home there was a good predisposition towards the arts. I ended up dedicating myself to cultural journalism for many years, before taking the step of dedicating myself to writing full-time. Now my parents accept my vocation, although, like many other people, they don't quite see it as a real profession.

I ask you all this because I am trying to get an idea of what kind of person might have written a novel like The Trophy.

— I like to transform myself and take risks with every book. Firstly, because each book requires an adaptation between the plot and the style, but also because I wouldn't like to repeat the same trick. What motivates me to write is that I can fail. Art has to do with venturing into an unsafe, dangerous, and new place.

The place where he delved into with The trophy brings together these three characteristics, doesn't it?

— It's a novel that, a priori, I myself wouldn't buy in a bookstore.

How would you describe it?

— It poses an ethical nightmare with the tension of a thriller in a country in southern Africa where its protagonist, Hunter White, a New York stock investor, pursues a black rhinoceros, the last of the five big game trophies he is missing from his collection. While he is there, he is made an offer that first horrifies him but which he soon accepts.

This is the most delicate part of the story.

— Yes. They propose to hunt a human being.

When and how did the story occur to you?

— It was around 2014. Before that, I had never been interested in hunting nor did I think it could happen. Furthermore, I believed that as a left-wing European with studies, I would not look at the African continent from a colonialist perspective. But I was wrong on both counts. When I read a report about the big five [refers to the five most dangerous and hardest animals to hunt], the subject caught my attention so much that I started researching. Very soon I had the character, the Hunter, and the narrative arc of what I wanted to explain. It doesn't happen to me often, but I put aside what I was writing to start The Trophy. While working on the novel, I realized all the influences I was carrying when I wrote about that world: after all, I was educated with films like Out of Africa, I had read Hemingway and I also had in mind, consciously or unconsciously, colonial photography. If we think of Africa, the first thing that comes to mind is a landscape with hills and a very large, orange sun bathing it in light. It's absurd that it's like that. There are hundreds of different Africas, as many as countries, cultures, religions, and languages you find there, with great contrasts between the smallest villages and huge, modern cities.

There is a passage in the novel where a tracker, Jeans, says to Hunter: "With all due respect, Mr. White, you know nothing about Africa. You have never been there. Or do you think the lodge is Africa? There aren't even any Africans there, except for the butler, the cook, and the maids".

— Even now there are many people who tell you they have been to Africa many times and when they tell you stories about their travels you realize that they have had absolutely no connection with the reality of the continent.

The Hunter states, within the novel, that he loves the animals he kills.

— It is the only element I share with him: the love for nature.

One of his aspirations is to protect "the world of civilization". He dedicates part of his investments to buying land in secluded areas of countries such as Costa Rica, Greece, and Kazakhstan. When he goes to Africa to hunt the black rhinoceros, he is convinced that by eliminating the animal he is doing a good deed.

— The first question I ask myself in relation to this topic is whether we can really say that there is still any corner of the world that is not civilized. The entire African continent is influenced, disturbed, or even created by the effects of colonialism, even if the Hunter does not want to see it. He prefers to think that there are places where civilization has not yet arrived. When he goes hunting, he does so from a Western perspective, because he hunts for pleasure: it has nothing to do with any religious ritual, nor with a practical motivation, nor does he hunt to feed himself. On the other hand, for the research for this novel, I have spoken with many hunters, and I can say that many of them have a greater connection with nature and with the preservation of the environment than people who are against hunting and buy their food at the supermarket.

That's why it's so disturbing to read how he argues for the benefits of killing a black rhinoceros.

— There is a big difference between hunting a rabbit or a rare and protected species like the black rhinoceros. Paying the fortune that a license costs to hunt certain animals in some countries makes it worthwhile to protect them through policies that stimulate population growth. It seems like a paradox, but it happens: by hunting an endangered animal, you can favor the government ending up helping its species. This reasoning is made, once again, from the post-capitalist context in which we live. To reintroduce species, you first have to have made them dwindle to the point of endangering them.

Van Heeren, the hunter who accompanies the Hunter during expeditions, proposes to his client that he kill a young man from the San tribe who lives on his properties. He convinces him by saying that for the San, who have been living in those territories for thousands of years – until colonialism and, later, the inhabitants of the countries where they lived almost exterminated them – the death of a single member is not as important as the good that the community will achieve with the money earned in return.

— It is important to remember, especially regarding the second part of the book, which is the most delicate from a moral point of view, that we cannot know what truth lies in Van Heeren's words. It is the account he tells with the aim of convincing the Hunter. The reader reads a story in the third person, but always tied to the Hunter's perspective. He sees what he sees. He feels what he feels. It suits the Hunter to believe that the death of a san boy can benefit his community, because that way he gets rid of the idea that he is killing someone and that he is only hunting him in a fair way. It is, however, the strategy that allows me to tell a story like this without most readers abandoning it. only hunts him in a fair way. It is, however, the strategy that allows me to tell a story like this without most readers abandoning it.

The last hundred pages detail the pursuit of ¡Nqate by the Hunter and Dawid, the tribe boy who helps him track the prey, and everything that happens next. Although we suffer, we cannot stop reading.

— I admit that it is a reading that can be unpleasant. The novel has provoked all sorts of reactions. There are hunters who have read it and told me that for the first time they felt recognized and not judged, only for the part about hunting the rhinoceros, of course. There have been people who have left it halfway because they could not stand what was explained in it, and people who have abandoned it shortly before the end because they feared the outcome... This is how they have conveyed it to me in presentations and book clubs. However, after listening to what I explain about the book, most of them give it a second chance.