Dolores Redondo: "If one day my head fails me, who will I say that I am? Dolores Redondo or Amaia Salazar?"

BarcelonaCan it happen that a character “possesses” their creator? This is what happens to Benedict Newman, a millionaire and bestselling writer, who faints while looking at photographs of a murder and wakes up turned into the detective of his novels: Colt Stark. Nash Elizondo, the character created by Dolores Redondo (San Sebastián, 1969), is the one who will have to find out if Newman is innocent or could be involved in a series of crimes. The Basque writer, author of books such as those of the Baztan trilogy, returns to bookstores with Totes les nits, totes les ciutats (Columna/Destino; with translation into Catalan by Núria Parés Sellarès), a novel in which she delves into identity disorders but also plays with many more literary resources to hook the reader.

In this novel she appears as a character and even shows her house.

— Well, it is a fictitious house. Once, a publication insisted on taking a photograph of me at my home as a condition for putting me on the cover. I agreed, and the next day I changed my office because I did not want it to be public. I regretted it. There are things that are part of my privacy. Works are born inside a writer, and you have to preserve that place at all costs. As Ana María Matute said: "If you want to know about me, look for me in my books, where everything is there". In this book, where my alter ego is a writer, everything that Benedict Newman says I subscribe to word for word.

Newman and Redondo (the character) reflect on the way of narrating, on why a writer writes what they write, on success, on the literary market...

— The one who truly grants you the place you have is always the reader. Sometimes there are absurd debates about why an author wins an award or sells so much, as happened with Isabel Allende. She won the Planeta because she is the queen. It is the readers who choose. It doesn't matter who signs the check: the day the reader doesn't want you, you have nothing.

Do readers continue to rule, even when there is the whole issue of social networks or big marketing campaigns?

— It just seems like nonsense to dumb down the reader's idea. Sometimes what happens is that a successful theme emerges and there is an attempt to exploit that genre. But the reader perfectly distinguishes who is the locomotive and who is trailing behind. When you are left hungry after reading a good novel, you look for more in that genre, just as when you remember a great love and look for that sensation in others.

In this novel there is much reflection on language and reading, not only as entertainment, but as self-knowledge. Is it a defense of reading beyond leisure?

— You should always enjoy reading. If you read a classic like The Count of Monte Cristo, you see a story of abuse of power and hopelessness, but also about revenge. It is an absolutely current story. However, you should only read it if you feel like it and to enjoy the reading. We live in the era of the search for identity. Social networks have democratized content and allow anyone to have relevance, but identity cannot be found in 40-second videos. In literature, you can find all human emotions. We believe that what happens to us is unique, but everything has already happened to someone in history. By reading about this in books, you understand yourself better and tolerate others better.

There is also a critique of prejudices against writers, in the sense that they are not a certain way because of what they write.

— Part of the novel is born from a specific moment. You often ask me how much of me is in the character. It can be turned around: what is there of the character in me? When you spend years building a character, living in their mind, having their fear, feeling their loves and their personal ruins, they also change you.

This moment he speaks of is when he remembered a place where he played as a child, but it was not his memory but Amaia's, one of his characters.

— It shook me and it amazed me. It hasn't happened to me again. It was in Elizondo, the setting of my novels, which is a relatively small place where I identify every house, every street... Things have happened everywhere. But I asked myself: if my mind fails me one day, who will I say I am? Dolores Redondo or Amaia Salazar? Practically, I know as much about her as I do about myself. This anecdote is real and it was what motivated what happens to Benedict Newman in the book. Investigating, I found cases of actors like Johnny Weissmüller. At the end of their lives, when their real identity was damaged by illness, another personality perfectly constructed over years took control. The mind retreats to where it finds a safe refuge. In serious cases of trauma or illness, these dissociative identity disorders occur. Looking for points of reference, I discovered that the same thing happened to Miguel Delibes as happened to me. I felt that I was not alone in this experience and the possibility of a much broader metaliterary world opened up to me. I have created a writer who creates another character at the same time, and I have enjoyed detective Colt Stark a lot, who is absolutely old-fashioned.

It is noticeable that she has also ended up loving the characters, Amaia (the protagonist of the Baztan Trilogy) and the Nash (from The Quiet Valleys). It does not let them go.

— When the novel is born from within, what you do is summon your ghosts of the past, present, and future. You keep these characters because, deep down, they are part of you.

Amaia and Nash share a complex background regarding the search for their origins.

— Yes. In real life, millions of people live with absence, grief, or family secrets that are hidden "to protect." But to build identity, one must face the truth. As we said about Benedict Newman, if you lie to yourself, sooner or later everything falls apart.

He has always given great importance to settings. He made Elizondo famous, but in this novel the action takes place in an unnamed city.

— I wanted Benedict Newman and me to always be in an indeterminate urban setting to convey that sense of disconnection that the character has. I wanted to reflect on the involuntary cruelty we exert when we want to "bring back" to reality people who dissociate or suffer from dementia, when perhaps they are in their own refuge. We must be careful about imposing what we consider to be our only reality.