Can readers be captivated by a novel written in Alexandrine verse?

Barcelona"I think all my books have something related to mythology or some kind of revelation. It's about searching for something that isn't obvious, making a discovery. But I try to make each book very different; that is, I try to do what I don't know how to do. Because I think that in literature we have to take risks, you know?" Anna Pantinat (Barcelona, ​​1977) is a multifaceted artist. She is a part-time high school teacher, a member with her sister Laia of the electro-punk garage band Pentina't Lula, and, until recently, the author of four books of poetry, including Posthuman joys (2025), which is in the process of being set to music. Sumer is here It is the fifth book he has published and comes after 13 years of work.

"When I did Suddenly, one summer [Winner of the 2012 Ventura Gassol Prize] stemmed from a personal experience, from having worked in Cadaqués and from all the things that had happened to me, somewhat transformed. The next book, Night Construction [Joan Duch Award 2013], started from a more lyrical point of view. Sumer is here "It's my third book, actually. I wanted to explore fiction. Autobiographical literature is very interesting, but I wanted to do something else," he explains.

It was at the CosmoCaixa exhibition Before the flood, Mesopotamia 3500-2100 BC (2012) where she found a 4,000-year-old poem that inspired her. "It spoke of destruction and the sound of gusts without human voices, of the dust it raised, of ashes and devastation," we read in the book's epilogue. "Dogs barked and goats roamed, but no one answered the lament of the last survivor. Order, strangely modern, visual, and expressive."

"I was very interested in researching alternatives to patriarchy, and I saw that Sumerian mythology had superpowered goddesses and agents, who weren't mothers or wives like in Greek mythology," she explains. She also discovered that the first known author was a woman, the Sumerian priestess. Enheduanna"First I published another book called Who is not called [City of Manacor Award 2017], which has to do with a matriarchal mythology." Meanwhile, she was working on Sumer is here.

Against the usual apocalypses

Pantinat draws on the literary genre of lament for the destroyed city and imagines a Barcelona devastated by a meteorite, where a few humans have managed to survive in shelters. Talisa, a 23-year-old classics student, has been in Shelter 18 and years later encounters a group of teenagers to whom she explains the disaster. It is a post-apocalyptic tale that blends narrative and poetry. "I thought that epic—this genre that gave rise to the novel and was originally written in verse—was becoming obsolete if we only reclaimed it from the perspective of military conquest," we read in the epilogue.

The author wonders why we "keep repeating and remaking" catastrophic narratives. "I suppose it has to do with our fear of extinction. What would happen if our culture or our worldview ceased to exist?" she says. But her intention is to turn the values ​​about human nature on their head in these narratives: "I didn't want to repeat certain trends about what happens when we have to survive. It seems that when we get to the most basic question of human existence, women are supposed to have children and men are supposed to fight against enemies who want to take our resources. And, damn, in that sense."

Pantinado wants to talk with The second origin typescript, of Manuel de Pedrolo. "He Typescript I was fascinated. I've reread it and I love it. But notice that Alba's mission is to have children, to repopulate the earth. And this is somewhat problematic, you know? It's a superhuman, valid option, and one that I find wonderful, but I think we should also explore other possibilities for female characters." Talisa's mission is different: "She's more interested in rescuing cultural or historical issues."

That's why the catastrophe is caused by a meteorite. "If I made it an ecological cataclysm, there would be the question of human culpability and I would be diverting myself from the topic I wanted to talk about, which is memory as heritage." Sumer is here It deals with another cataclysm or paradigm shift: currently, there are reactionary forces that want to restore the old order, and there are people who don't want to return to that order because it is very oppressive, especially for certain groups. The book is situated within this interplay of forces and resistance."

A trilogy in verse

Sumer is here It's presented as a novel. "The epic is a genre in which a character develops over time and, therefore, is longer than a poem or a collection of poems. In a book of poems, there's a lot of fragmentation and no plot. Here, there is a plot. I wrote this book thinking of a reader of narrative fiction who expects to be captivated by a story, and that's what it is." The book is structured in 67 cantos written in free verse (alexandrines). This is one of the reasons why it took 13 years to finish. "I felt I lacked narrative tools; I had to train myself a bit in how to structure a story so that it would be interesting. Also, I was writing in alexandrines; I was constantly telling a story."

The choice of the alexandrine was not accidental. It belongs to the epic and learned tradition. Illustrious poets, such as Jacint Verdaguer and Josep Carner, have used it. "Verdaguer is wonderful and has a very interesting fantastical element. The alexandrine has a legendary meter. It helps you find that detached tone, like an epic or mythological tale. Besides, the Sumerians had a fixation with the number 6, and I thought: well, 6 plus 6, the alexandrine."

The book is the first part of a trilogy. "I had too many loose ends and too many characters. It was getting too long and becoming a mountain to climb. So I said: first I'll write one book, we'll see how it goes, and then, if there's interest, we'll continue. And when I mentioned it to the editors at Males Herbes, they thought it was a great idea." The reader will be left with many unanswered questions: Who saved Talisa? How does her trial end? How was the reconstruction carried out? "All of this needs to be explored. But, of course, it needs a certain amount of time. If I had written just one book, it would have taken me 25 years to finish. I needed to stop."