Arturo Perez-Reverte, the author of The skin of the drum or The queen of the south, like the adjective revertiano to refer to works such as these, where the suspense of a novel is mixed with the espionage, of any kind, or violence, be it street, religious or mafia. At times it has escaped of that adjective and that tone, that also underlies his famous saga of captain Alatriste, as in the very melancholic, The painter of battles or in The tango of the Old Guard and good Men, in the which assumes a voice more mature, more distant from those rows that have marinara or sisters of some of his most famous novels, and writes as if he were browsing in a leisurely way. This time he has written a novel of intrigue and act ion, which happens in a period very difficult to convert in fiction, the beginning of the Spanish civil war, when Franco sought to take power alone and remained imprisoned in Alicante for the shadow of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. That presence-absence of the leader of the Phalanx and the possibility (which he recast as fiction, but in reality he lived) it was finally released the leader of the Phalanx is not as decisive in the book as the cynicism that dominates the action of the persons involved in the plot.
This novel last, Falcó, has the air of becoming the beginning of another saga, the spy of off-road stars, so-called, Falcó, it is much less human than Alatriste. Falcó is an amoral, fell on the side of Franco, but it could have fallen on either side. That site amoral from the wars is a land that welcomes Falcó with open arms. And that bend in the dark of those roads of war is the fiction revertiana. She talks to Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Cartagena, 1951), that he was a journalist of action and that now rages in the Royal Academy battles that are already public. At the end of the conversation we asked him if he wanted to refer to them. "That didn’t come to story here. I respect a lot of the Academy".
QUESTION. Looks like the beginning of a saga…
RESPONSE. So it would seem. In The tango of the Old Guard I left in the head fringes to be resolved, told me that there was a novel and I got to work on it. I saw that there was a canon that it defined, a type of dialogue; that was not like the other. And as I wrote I realized that I enjoyed with this model of writing, and it was a shame to close it. So there are open doors to be able to continue with Falcó.
Q. Both in The painter of battles like in The tango of the Old Guard there is an encouragement here disappears…
R. Each novel has its demands. You can’t write The duel of Conrad as if you wrote War and peace, Tolstoy. A novel of espionage, action, violence, passions can not have a very slow development, because it bores the reader and pulls it out of the topic. This novel required me to containment, cleanup, descriptions, minimal and effective, dialogues much more cut and chopped, and a speed narrative far superior to those of other novels.
Q. And how does that affect the literary vocation that underlie, for example, in The painter of battles?
A. it does Not affect because I am a professional writer, I have 20 years in this job, my work I know reasonably well. When I start to think about a book before I see how I’m going to tell. When I can think of good Men, The painter of battles or this novel I do not say: "I’m going to see how I get the creative urge, what good, what a thrill". No, No. For months I ponder quietly what more can I, coldly, estructuro the story to tell effectively the novel. Each novel has a canon. You can be the biggest pimp in the world, but there is something called humility professional. When you’re doing it not you who puts in the novel, is the novel that tells how you want to write it.
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