Keeping pace with her extensive bibliography and with a small screen adaptation of her novel ‘Tell me who I am’, writer and journalist Julia Navarro presents her latest narrative journeythis time to the convulsive 20th century in Europe. ‘The boy who lost the war’ accompanies Pablo Sanza boy who was separated from his family during the last months of the war. Spanish Civil War and forced into exile in Stalin’s Russia. It is also the story of two womenClotilde Sanz and Anya Petrova who, although separated by thousands of kilometers and the dictatorial walls of that century, are united by their maternal love for Pablo. A story about uprooting, dehumanization and loss, but also about hope and love in dark times. A demonstration that, even in the most complicated corners of history, life breaks through.
QUESTION. What inspired the story of “The Boy Who Lost the War”?
ANSWER. In my books readers always find a trace of my obsessions and my concerns, and in this book it is easy to find that trace. To write this book I have taken a lifetime because it contains many of my concerns and also many of my readings.. Many years ago, when I read Anna Akhmatova’s poems, I was interested not only in what I was reading, but also in who was the woman who had written those poems. And knowing her biography, a woman who had supported the Bolshevik revolution and who was suddenly devoured by that revolution; persecuted, imprisoned, mistreated, a parallel is established with what happened in Franco’s Spain.
In the end, that parallelism that dictatorships are the same: no matter whether they are red or blue, they always react in the same way and that is by curtailing the freedom of citizens and attacking any thought that does not coincide with what suits the dictator or the autocrat of the day. And then there, surely thinking about that biography of Akhmatova, reading her poems, I began to sketch what this book is, establishing the parallelism of two women. A Spanish woman, Clotilde, who is an illustrator; and a Russian woman, Anya, who is a poet and composer.and both are persecuted by two dictatorial regimes.
P.- What leads you to place this story in the context of the Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War?
R.- In the 20th century, which is not so far away either, two great totalitarian ideologies took hold, communism on the one hand, and fascism on the other, which later had different manifestations in different countries. They really marked that century and we still have the consequences of those ideologies today.. So that also led me to reflect on how totalitarianisms still exist today. We should learn the lessons of the pastbut sometimes we believe that knowing history is enough to avoid repeating mistakes, although, unfortunately, even if we know history, it seems that we men continue to make mistakes.
P.- And there are still many totalitarian countries….
R.- Sure, you take a world map right now and you look up how many democracies there are in the world…. That is simply the cotton test. We live in a democratic country, so it seems that the rest of the world is democratic too, but it is not. Therefore, the totalitarian temptations of one place or another, the autocracies, are part of the reality of today’s world. They manifest themselves differently than they did a century ago. The world has changed, it has evolved and now people no longer wear belts, but there is another way. Now we call them neo-populisms to what are totalitarian regimes of the right or left..
P.- Does situating history in the 20th century also help you to talk about current problems?
R.- Placing history at a time when these two great ideologies are part of what is Europe and are expanding to other places helps us to reflect on the present. That is to say, history is passing, time goes by, but the populist totalitarian temptations are there. I believe that through books, through novels, there can also be elements for us to reflect on. I believe that democracy concerns all of us citizens and it is something we have to take care of every day and never take for granted. Sometimes we live in the comfort zone of living in a democracy and we are oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the world.
I do not have a look only to what is just around me, but I try to have a look beyond. It’s like when we talk about feminism. I know that we live in a country where there is a legislation that speaks and consecrates equality between men and women, but I am not satisfied with that.. And I am concerned that women are being arrested in Iran simply because they are not wearing the veil as the ayatollahs say they should. I am concerned about what is happening in Afghanistan, where there are women who are buried alive in a burqa. I am concerned about the millions of girls who cannot go to school and get an education because they are girls. In other words, one can have a navel-gazing view of the world or a broader view of the world.. We are fortunate to live in a democracy, to live in the European Union, to live in democratic and free societies, but we must look beyond.
P.- Has this new novel posed any special challenge for you?
R.- Yes, especially looking for documentation. Fortunately, I had read many books by survivors and people who went through the gulag. There are also biographies of women who went through Franco’s prisons. But all this, even if you have read it at a certain time, you have to reread it, you have to order it to take snippets of those lives that will help you to build lives on paper.
P.- The main character, Pablo, is just a 5 year old boy… Tell us about him.
R.- During the civil war, his father decided (as happened in many families) to spare his son the ravages of war by sending him away. So some children went to European countries and also to America, but others went to the Soviet Union. The problem is that from the Soviet Union they could not return because it was a dictatorship. Spain, also after the Civil War, is a dictatorship. The two regimes have no relations and therefore the children who were sent there temporarily could no longer return. So, Pablo is a child who is lucky enough to find a family in Russia that welcomes him.who takes care of him and becomes his family. In reality, Paul has two mothers, his biological mother and that foster mother who, in the end, is the one he grows up with, the one with whom he becomes a man, the one who accompanies him throughout his life’s journey. And Pablo will never forget his mother, but he will never forget his mother. Anya, who is his adoptive mother, is also part of the affection that is established between mothers and sons..
P.- Did you also want to vindicate the figure of women in this stage of history?
R.- Women have always been there, we have always been there. The thing is that history has always been told by men and men have told themselves and have passed over the presence of women almost on tiptoe.with some exceptions. So I could have chosen that, instead of two mothers, there should be two fathers, who are also part of the novel (the biological father and the adoptive father), but I wanted to focus on them. Especially because they are also part of the novel. they were women on whom fell all the wrath of fascist repression.The wrath of Franco’s regime fell on Clotilde, who was a cartoonist and caricaturist, and the wrath of Stalinist communist repression fell on Anya, who was a poet and musician.
P.- Your novel ‘Tell me who I am’ has been adapted into a television series. Would you like this novel to also appear on the small screen?
R.- I don’t write with adaptations in mind, that’s not my goal. My goal is to write stories that do not leave readers indifferent. But I would be betraying the readers and I would be betraying myself. if when I start to write what I start to think is, “let’s see what I can come up with that they can put on the screen”. I dedicate myself to writing, not to making scripts for television.. I think it’s all very commendable, but it’s not what I do. I have no ambition to have my books brought to the screen.