The electric debut of a great defender of Catalan

BarcelonaUntil she turned thirty, Mar Márquez (Barcelona, 1981) only spoke Spanish. Despite being born and living in Catalonia, her entire environment communicated in that language, so for her Catalan was a foreign and distant language. But Márquez started working in a place where the working language was Catalan, and she began a relationship with a partner who also spoke it, so she made a decision: "I chose Catalan, I made it my chosen and beloved language. It was hard for me, but I stand by it. Since then, I write and think in Catalan," she states. The choice is even more significant because it was linked to her first steps as a future writer. Starting from classes at the Ateneu Barcelonès, Márquez began to craft the seed of her first novel, Amat Amat, which she has just published with Males Herbes. "I am a great defender of the language. Let's create culture in Catalan, please," Márquez demands.

The story of her debut is one of those that rarely happen in the publishing world. "The first pages of a manuscript already let you guess whether you will give it a chance or not. We didn't know Mar, she sent us her book, we started reading it, and it captivated us. When we finished it, we had no doubt about publishing it," explains the editor of Males Herbes Ricard Planas. Amat Amat takes place in the near future where the world is a little different, although our present resonates in it. Society is highly stratified – the inhabitants of each neighborhood are so based on their purchasing power – and politics has become a spectacle: deputies defend their proposals in live broadcasts, and these advance based on the number of likes from the population.

Through science fiction, Márquez constructs an electric and vibrant novel, which advances at the pace of What does it mean to be a good person

Through science fiction, Márquez constructs an electric and vibrant novel, which progresses at a thriller's pace without letting go of the characters' moral conflicts. To save his life, Amat will hire a Volunteer to take his place in the sacrifice, but remorse will lead him to meet this person and will plunge him into the most sordid corners of society. "It's a story about what it means to be a good person. Amat wants to be one, but at the same time doesn't want to lose his dream life, and that plunges him into a spiral of destruction," says the writer.

The universe that surrounds him makes one think of current times, but it pushes to the limit some situations that are already problematic today. "I wanted to reflect the moment we are in, where social networks have an immeasurable value and capture the electoral public in ways that make no sense. I also wanted to explore who we are in the midst of this madness, what decision-making power we have as individuals. We do have it, even if perhaps we don't realize it," reflects Márquez, who adds that in the face of "the spectacle that politics has become" she feels "powerlessness and frustration".

The writer imagines a world where human reproduction and death are regulated (suicide is mandatory at a certain age, births are controlled), plants practically do not exist and people feed on processed products and squirrels. "It's a state close to communism, but all systems, even the most interesting ones, when put into practice, are complicated to succeed," emphasizes Márquez, who cites as references

J. M. Coetzee

, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and George Orwell.

The obsession with language

Despite his relatively brief experience thinking and writing in Catalan, Márquez has worked hard on the language of the novel. In fact, this is one of the book's strengths, both for the fluency of the narrative voice and for the stylistic decision to have the lower-class characters speak a Catalan contaminated by other languages and very rich in orality. For example, with phrases like these: "You are a gallant who plays the pimps. I imagined that you would all be great. Luxury for a flex! You already know."

Márquez, who currently works at the El Gínjol Blau bookshop in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, explains that one of his "obsessions" when writing the novel was the language. "I need the text to have rhythm, beauty, and coherence so that the reader travels and forgets that they are reading, that they live the experience –says the writer–. In the end, reading is a little magic that we all have and that allows us to embody ourselves in the other."