Interview with novelist Javier Cercas


  • English
  • Arabic

"William Faulkner says that the past never passes ['The past is never dead']," Javier Cercas tells me, during a conversation filled with the kind of literary and historical references that embellish his work. "The past is the stuff we are made of. When we speak about the collective past we are speaking about the personal past," he elaborates. During our conversation, indeed, he speaks about the past vividly enough to transport us to the complexities of the Spanish Civil War, the powerful subject matter of his latest novel, The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-five Minutes in History and Imagination.

Cercas developed a deep interest in the history of his country of Spain from an early age. Born there in 1962, he has since taught at the University of Illinois as well as lectured in Spanish literature at the University of Girona. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages, his 2001 novel Soldiers of Salamis being the tour de force that propelled him into international literary stardom. It sold more than a million copies worldwide, won six literary awards in Spain and was turned into a film by David Trueba.

Soldiers of Salamis tells a fictional account of a writer (called Javier Cercas) attempting to write about events in the Spanish Civil War - a subject he chooses to tackle again in the form of "historical narrative" in his compelling new book.

"Every destiny, however long and complicated, essentially boils down to a single moment," Cercas says, this time quoting Jorge Luis Borges, another of his literary inspirations, "the moment a man knows, once and for all, who he is." The idea of "the single moment" pervades Cercas's new book as he explores how the course of history can hinge upon a moment and uses that trope to create tension and suspense throughout.

It is a crucial moment in Spain's history that Cercas excavates: the dawn of new personal and political understanding. On February 23, 1981, Spain was discarding Franco's dictatorship, and Cercas was an 18-year-old university student. Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero and a band of civil guards burst into the Spanish parliament during the investiture of the new prime minister and began shooting. Three defiant members of the Cortes did not dive for cover, and it is the mystery of these men that Cercas's book probes. The book is published to mark the 30th anniversary of this coup.

In the novel, Cercas skilfully x-rays causes and consequences, motives and morality, and charts Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy.

It is a moment, says Cercas, in which it is difficult to distinguish the real from the fictitious. At some stage, great historical characters begin to lose their status as historical characters and enter the realms of fiction, he explains, and it is the blurred line between history and fiction, stylised fact and fiction, that he explores.

"It's a strange sort of experiment with the novel: essay, chronicle, biographies, a strange book that finally I think is a novel - maybe," says Cercas, describing the intriguing form of his new book. "And yet, what is a novel? I'm trying to understand what a novel is. What can we do with that genre? I think it's a very important question."

Cercas initially finished a draft of this book as a novel, but was "full of doubts" about the form. What was real and what fiction? Was the February coup a failure or triumph of democracy?

Uncertainty proves fertile ground for a writer, allowing old genres to be challenged and new ideas to be born. As a novelist, says Cercas, he is "authorised to take liberties with reality" because "the novel is a genre that doesn't answer to reality, but only to itself," he writes. On choosing a form for his new book, however, he decided that "pure reality" mattered to him more than fiction.

There is both pleasure and pain in the act of writing, for Cercas - though he acknowledges that the difficult moments are the most fruitful. "It's a pleasure but also hard. There is suffering in it and there is a sort of adjustment with reality. You need to imagine a reality; correct reality that doesn't work; create something in which you feel OK, can control. Happiness is not good for a writer. What's natural is reading."

And Cercas is a voracious reader. "I was a reader first. I think that all writers become writers because they are readers. There is an impulse of imitation. We humans are imitators. Writing is the same thing. You read and think that's fantastic and want to imitate it."

He began as a writer by reading adventure novels, including Robert Louis Stevenson and Emilio Salgari. "Then I became aware of language," he says. "I became aware that literature was made of language. Some Latin American writers were also extremely important, like Borges. The English tradition was very important for me... The first English writer I discovered was Oscar Wilde. De Profundis is one of the best things I've read in my life. The Decay of Lying is simply fantastic."

Other writers he cites as inspirational include Evelyn Waugh, Kazuo Ishiguro and the French tradition, including Gustave Flaubert.

Of his compatriots, he deeply admires the "Golden Age" writers. "I think Don Quixote is the best novel ever written - it is incredible that a Spanish writer wrote that. The English understood that Don Quixote was the most important novel ever - Sterne, Fielding, and many more were influenced by it. One cannot understand the English novel without Cervantes. But we forgot that we invented the novel."

The Spanish-language novel is still in excellent health, as proved by the younger generation of writers collected in the Granta 113 literary magazine, which showcases "the best of young Spanish-language novelists", who continue to explore reality with exciting stylistic techniques.

"As a writer I work out of obsession. Something becomes an obsession," Cercas explains of his writing processes, and one obsession is with the mysterious territory of the past. Although he evokes the specifics of Spanish reality, he explains: "I'm not talking about politics or history but deeper reality which has a relationship with the way men are in the earth."

Indeed, as well as capturing the arc of history, Cercas evokes the minutiae of the everyday - the smell, taste, sounds of the moment, which linger in the memory. He is also an insatiable questioner. "I like the elementary questions: why did the apple fall down not up? So, what is it about these three guys [central to the coup at the narrative's heart]? Then comes the process of analysing and seeing what happened at that moment; digging in that essential moment of the 20th century, the moment when the Spanish Civil War finished. I tried to discover the morals. History is an excuse to talk about other things. What is courage? What is loyalty? What is treason?"

Cercas's writing provokes the largest questions about history and keeps us thinking and questioning long after the final page has been turned. As we part ways, the hotel courtyard seems to be teeming with ghosts of the past.

Follow us on Twitter and keep up to date with the latest in arts and lifestyle news at twitter.com/LifeNationalUAE

COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Carzaty%2C%20now%20Kavak%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELaunch%20year%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ECarzaty%20launched%20in%202018%2C%20Kavak%20in%20the%20GCC%20launched%20in%202022%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20140%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Automotive%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ECarzaty%20raised%20%246m%20in%20equity%20and%20%244m%20in%20debt%3B%20Kavak%20plans%20%24130m%20investment%20in%20the%20GCC%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The Indoor Cricket World Cup

When: September 16-23

Where: Insportz, Dubai

Indoor cricket World Cup:
Insportz, Dubai, September 16-23

UAE fixtures:
Men

Saturday, September 16 – 1.45pm, v New Zealand
Sunday, September 17 – 10.30am, v Australia; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Monday, September 18 – 2pm, v England; 7.15pm, v India
Tuesday, September 19 – 12.15pm, v Singapore; 5.30pm, v Sri Lanka
Thursday, September 21 – 2pm v Malaysia
Friday, September 22 – 3.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 3pm, grand final

Women
Saturday, September 16 – 5.15pm, v Australia
Sunday, September 17 – 2pm, v South Africa; 7.15pm, v New Zealand
Monday, September 18 – 5.30pm, v England
Tuesday, September 19 – 10.30am, v New Zealand; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Thursday, September 21 – 12.15pm, v Australia
Friday, September 22 – 1.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 1pm, grand final

MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League last-16, second leg:

Real Madrid 1 (Asensio 70'), Ajax 4 (Ziyech 7', Neres 18', Tadic 62', Schone 72')

Ajax win 5-3 on aggregate

MATCH INFO

Watford 1 (Deulofeu 80' p)

Chelsea 2 (Abraham 5', Pulisic 55')

Jetour T1 specs

Engine: 2-litre turbocharged

Power: 254hp

Torque: 390Nm

Price: From Dh126,000

Available: Now

Test

Director: S Sashikanth

Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan

Star rating: 2/5

The specs

Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8

Transmission: seven-speed

Power: 620bhp

Torque: 760Nm

Price: Dh898,000

On sale: now

Citizenship-by-investment programmes

United Kingdom

The UK offers three programmes for residency. The UK Overseas Business Representative Visa lets you open an overseas branch office of your existing company in the country at no extra investment. For the UK Tier 1 Innovator Visa, you are required to invest £50,000 (Dh238,000) into a business. You can also get a UK Tier 1 Investor Visa if you invest £2 million, £5m or £10m (the higher the investment, the sooner you obtain your permanent residency).

All UK residency visas get approved in 90 to 120 days and are valid for 3 years. After 3 years, the applicant can apply for extension of another 2 years. Once they have lived in the UK for a minimum of 6 months every year, they are eligible to apply for permanent residency (called Indefinite Leave to Remain). After one year of ILR, the applicant can apply for UK passport.

The Caribbean

Depending on the country, the investment amount starts from $100,000 (Dh367,250) and can go up to $400,000 in real estate. From the date of purchase, it will take between four to five months to receive a passport. 

Portugal

The investment amount ranges from €350,000 to €500,000 (Dh1.5m to Dh2.16m) in real estate. From the date of purchase, it will take a maximum of six months to receive a Golden Visa. Applicants can apply for permanent residency after five years and Portuguese citizenship after six years.

“Among European countries with residency programmes, Portugal has been the most popular because it offers the most cost-effective programme to eventually acquire citizenship of the European Union without ever residing in Portugal,” states Veronica Cotdemiey of Citizenship Invest.

Greece

The real estate investment threshold to acquire residency for Greece is €250,000, making it the cheapest real estate residency visa scheme in Europe. You can apply for residency in four months and citizenship after seven years.

Spain

The real estate investment threshold to acquire residency for Spain is €500,000. You can apply for permanent residency after five years and citizenship after 10 years. It is not necessary to live in Spain to retain and renew the residency visa permit.

Cyprus

Cyprus offers the quickest route to citizenship of a European country in only six months. An investment of €2m in real estate is required, making it the highest priced programme in Europe.

Malta

The Malta citizenship by investment programme is lengthy and investors are required to contribute sums as donations to the Maltese government. The applicant must either contribute at least €650,000 to the National Development & Social Fund. Spouses and children are required to contribute €25,000; unmarried children between 18 and 25 and dependent parents must contribute €50,000 each.

The second step is to make an investment in property of at least €350,000 or enter a property rental contract for at least €16,000 per annum for five years. The third step is to invest at least €150,000 in bonds or shares approved by the Maltese government to be kept for at least five years.

Candidates must commit to a minimum physical presence in Malta before citizenship is granted. While you get residency in two months, you can apply for citizenship after a year.

Egypt 

A one-year residency permit can be bought if you purchase property in Egypt worth $100,000. A three-year residency is available for those who invest $200,000 in property, and five years for those who purchase property worth $400,000.

Source: Citizenship Invest and Aqua Properties

Fund-raising tips for start-ups

Develop an innovative business concept

Have the ability to differentiate yourself from competitors

Put in place a business continuity plan after Covid-19

Prepare for the worst-case scenario (further lockdowns, long wait for a vaccine, etc.) 

Have enough cash to stay afloat for the next 12 to 18 months

Be creative and innovative to reduce expenses

Be prepared to use Covid-19 as an opportunity for your business

* Tips from Jassim Al Marzooqi and Walid Hanna

MATCH INFO

Inter Milan 2 (Vecino 65', Barella 83')

Verona 1 (Verre 19' pen)

T20 WORLD CUP QUALIFIERS

Qualifier A, Muscat

(All matches to be streamed live on icc.tv) 

Fixtures

Friday, February 18: 10am Oman v Nepal, Canada v Philippines; 2pm Ireland v UAE, Germany v Bahrain 

Saturday, February 19: 10am Oman v Canada, Nepal v Philippines; 2pm UAE v Germany, Ireland v Bahrain 

Monday, February 21: 10am Ireland v Germany, UAE v Bahrain; 2pm Nepal v Canada, Oman v Philippines 

Tuesday, February 22: 2pm Semi-finals 

Thursday, February 24: 2pm Final 

UAE squad:Ahmed Raza(captain), Muhammad Waseem, Chirag Suri, Vriitya Aravind, Rohan Mustafa, Kashif Daud, Zahoor Khan, Alishan Sharafu, Raja Akifullah, Karthik Meiyappan, Junaid Siddique, Basil Hameed, Zafar Farid, Mohammed Boota, Mohammed Usman, Rahul Bhatia

Favourite things

Luxury: Enjoys window shopping for high-end bags and jewellery

Discount: She works in luxury retail, but is careful about spending, waits for sales, festivals and only buys on discount

University: The only person in her family to go to college, Jiang secured a bachelor’s degree in business management in China

Masters: Studying part-time for a master’s degree in international business marketing in Dubai

Vacation: Heads back home to see family in China

Community work: Member of the Chinese Business Women’s Association of the UAE to encourage other women entrepreneurs

APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)

Display: 21cm Liquid Retina Display, 2266 x 1488, 326ppi, 500 nits

Chip: Apple A17 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

Storage: 128/256/512GB

Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4

Front camera: 12MP ultra-wide, f/2.4, Smart HDR 4, full-HD @ 25/30/60fps

Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID

Colours: Blue, purple, space grey, starlight

In the box: iPad mini, USB-C cable, 20W USB-C power adapter

Price: From Dh2,099

The specs

AT4 Ultimate, as tested

Engine: 6.2-litre V8

Power: 420hp

Torque: 623Nm

Transmission: 10-speed automatic

Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)

On sale: Now

While you're here
Mina Cup winners

Under 12 – Minerva Academy

Under 14 – Unam Pumas

Under 16 – Fursan Hispania

Under 18 – Madenat

World Test Championship table

1 India 71 per cent

2 New Zealand 70 per cent

3 Australia 69.2 per cent

4 England 64.1 per cent

5 Pakistan 43.3 per cent

6 West Indies 33.3 per cent

7 South Africa 30 per cent

8 Sri Lanka 16.7 per cent

9 Bangladesh 0

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
RESULTS

Manchester United 2

Anthony Martial 30'

Scott McTominay 90 6' 

Manchester City 0

Zayed%20Centre%20for%20Research
%3Cp%3EThe%20Zayed%20Centre%20for%20Research%20is%20a%20partnership%20between%20Great%20Ormond%20Street%20Hospital%2C%20University%20College%20London%20and%20Great%20Ormond%20Street%20Hospital%20Children%E2%80%99s%20Charity%20and%20was%20made%20possible%20thanks%20to%20a%20generous%20%C2%A360%20million%20gift%20in%202014%20from%20Sheikha%20Fatima%20bint%20Mubarak%2C%20Chairwoman%20of%20the%20General%20Women's%20Union%2C%20President%20of%20the%20Supreme%20Council%20for%20Motherhood%20and%20Childhood%2C%20and%20Supreme%20Chairwoman%20of%20the%20Family%20Development%20Foundation.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?

1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull

2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight

3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge

4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own

5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed

FROM%20THE%20ASHES
%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Khalid%20Fahad%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EStarring%3A%20Shaima%20Al%20Tayeb%2C%20Wafa%20Muhamad%2C%20Hamss%20Bandar%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ERating%3A%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Company%20Profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENamara%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EJune%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EMohammed%20Alnamara%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDubai%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EMicrofinance%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E16%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESeries%20A%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFamily%20offices%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
HOW TO WATCH

Facebook: TheNationalNews  

Twitter: @thenationalnews  

Instagram: @thenationalnews.com  

TikTok: @thenationalnews 

The specs

Engine: 5.0-litre V8

Power: 480hp at 7,250rpm

Torque: 566Nm at 4,600rpm

Transmission: 10-speed auto

Fuel consumption: L/100km

Price: Dh306,495

On sale: now

Primera Liga fixtures (all times UAE: 4 GMT)

Friday
Real Sociedad v Villarreal (10.15pm)
Real Betis v Celta Vigo (midnight)
Saturday
Alaves v Barcelona (8.15pm)
Levante v Deportivo La Coruna (10.15pm)
Girona v Malaga (10.15pm)
Las Palmas v Atletico Madrid (12.15am)
Sunday
Espanyol v Leganes (8.15pm)
Eibar v Athletic Bilbao (8.15pm)
Getafe v Sevilla (10.15pm)
Real Madrid v Valencia (10.15pm)

Guardians%20of%20the%20Galaxy%20Vol%203
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EJames%20Gunn%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Chris%20Pratt%2C%20Zoe%20Saldana%2C%20Dave%20Bautista%2C%20Vin%20Diesel%2C%20Bradley%20Cooper%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A