"When grandma told it they didn't seem like traumatic events, she recounted it as if they were adventures"

Barcelona“I made the decision to tell this story when I was about 16 years old, but I realized very quickly that I still didn't have the resources or enough maturity to do so. I knew I only had one chance to write this novel, because you only have one family story. That is why I set it aside and kept returning to it over the years,” explains Swiss writer Nelio Biedermann. Born in 2003 and a film student in Zurich, Biedermann published Lázár (Edicions 62/Salamandra; with a Catalan translation by Ignasi Pàmies) when he was 21 years old and it has become a total phenomenon. Acclaimed by critics and praised by Dua Lipa and Patti Smith, the novel, written in German, has been translated into more than thirty languages, the magazine Forbes has included Biedermann among the 30 most influential young people in the world, and the film rights have already been sold.

Biedermann grew up listening to his grandmother's stories about her childhood in a castle. His grandmother spoke to him about his paternal family, Hungarian aristocrats who had lived in castles surrounded by lands that were theirs, and about a not-so-distant era: the first half of the 20th century. “When my grandmother told it, they didn't seem like traumatic events. She recounted them as if they were adventures, even the escape to Switzerland,” says Biedermann. What the novel tells, however, is far from being a fairy tale. It is a family saga that begins with Lajos, who is born with almost transparent skin, under which one can distinguish his organs. The son of the baroness and one of her servants, he is born in a castle located next to a forest that can drive anyone who enters it mad. The forest, however, does not act as a border: the family cannot isolate itself from the terror of a convulsive century that includes two world wars, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the persecution of the Jews, communist repression, and exile.

Filling the silences

In every family history there are gaps. “That was my starting point: to fill these holes and shed light on the darkness through fiction and my imagination. To write the book I needed to make an atmosphere and daily life perceptible, and for that I had to start researching, both the less positive parts and daily life,” explains the author in Barcelona. To fill the silences, he also decided to introduce magical realism: “It made it possible for me to write very freely.”

While writing the novel, Biedermann did not tell his family what he was telling in it. When he had it finished, he went on a trip to Mexico and left them the text to avoid, at least for a while, any comment. “When my father read it, he called me and told me: ‘You haven’t told the truth, this novel has nothing to do with our family.’ I told him that I thought it was perfect, because it was a work of fiction. He read it again and, two weeks later, he called me back to tell me: ‘I have to retract what I told you; the story is actually very close to our family.’ That was exactly my goal: for the real story and fiction to blend,” he assures.

It is fiction, but the historical background is real. Among the characters in the plot stands out Imre, who chooses to flee from reality. “During the writing I often wondered how people didn’t go crazy with all the madness of that century. I was surprised at how people continued living their routine as if the world were not collapsing around them. For a character like Imre, madness is his salvation and his escape from a life he has not chosen. Madness has a double meaning: it can be a threat, but it can also mean freedom,” explains Biedermann. There are also those who lose their memory. “I have had to accept that there are things that are lost forever. The task of art is to create memories and recollections that come very close to reality,” he adds.

The sensory force

Lázár stands out for its sensory power (smells, the texture of food, sex scenes, the landscape). There are some borrowed moments. The kidneys that taste like pee are a reference to Ulysses by Joyce and, while writing, the author claims he was reading a lot of Marcel Proust. “Memory does not only appear through language, but also through the senses, which make you return to childhood. That is why this novel had to be very sensory,” he says.

This journey into the past ends up engaging with the current world: “The more you write, the more parallels you find in it. For example, I was writing about the Red Army and the Russians advancing towards the west, and then I would watch television and see that the situation was repeating itself. There is an unconscious influence of current events, without it being my intention.”

The novel talks about quite sensitive topics in Germany, where it has had a great reception, such as Nazism and Stalinism. "In politics, we see a constant rewriting of history, as is currently happening with options like the AfD in Germany. History is never closed. That is why I believe that in these times it is important to use art and literature to fight against this false historiography and keep memory rooted in the consciousness of the population. Although it is saddening to see the strength that these false narratives have on the masses, this must be a stimulus to act and not a reason to get discouraged," says Nelio Biedermann, who is already writing a new novel. But he does not want to say anything about it. Not even to his family.