• Final interview Donna Leon: "People are now more willing to believe in the impossible and accept the unacceptable"
  • Literature Donna Leon: "It is not necessary to kill someone to be a very bad person"
  • Books Donna Leon and her mythical Brunetti return with more mysteries

Of Irish blood, Donna Leon (Montclair, New Jersey, 1942) has a quarter of Latin American and another of German. She grew up in a family that she admits "entirely conventional". And from 1976 to 1981, when she settled in Italy, she worked as a professor in Iran at China's Suzhou University and nine months at King Saud University in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

That dreamy teacher specialized in English language and literature has just published A History of Her Own (Seix Barral), a fresh memoir, like the vegetables she used to buy at the Rialto market in Venice, where she lived for five decades. They are pages at times funny, always reflective, truffled with sincerity and a prose free of artifice. Today, with 30 volumes behind her and more than 20 million readers worldwide, Leon is considered the grande dame of crime fiction after having turned the curator Guido Brunetti, epitome of justice and morality, into an archetype of fiction. "There is no worse crime than not having lived," he warns.

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Literature.

The perfect best seller: crime novel, historical and a little salseo

  • Writing: ANDRÉS SEOANE Madrid
  • Writing: ILLUSTRATION: JOSETXU L. PIÑEIRO

The perfect best seller: crime novel, historical and a little salseo

Literature.

Carmen Mola: "There are two facts depleted from our memory: slavery and the origin of certain fortunes"

  • Writing: LUIS ALEMANY Havana

Carmen Mola: "There are two facts depleted from our memory: slavery and the origin of certain fortunes"

Perhaps for this reason, when she yawned with her work in New York, she accepted the proposal of an Italian-American friend to move with her to Italy. He arrived in Caposele, in the province of Avellino, and during dinner he fell in love with the Italians in front of juicy viands: salami, sausages, pasta, chicken, vegetables, tomatoes, salad, wine, bread and a wheel-sized cheese platter. "All the dishes were served with the desire to make us happy." Now living in Switzerland, he takes solace in rereading Dickens and the poets in the English language, and confesses to having enjoyed Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy: 1,600 pages, he says, full of "fantastic stories".

Why did you choose crime novels? My parents read a lot. After that experience, when I was already more than 50 years old, I had a conversation about music and the subject led to a story in which you had to assassinate a conductor. I wondered if I would be able to write a book about that. And I could. And here I am. 30 years later, I'm still doing it. Thucydides said stories happen to people who can tell them. Commissioner Brunetti always stands out for his deep sense of morality and justice. Have you never been tempted to fall into corruption? Corruption is unlikely because it already has a comfortable position. Never in all these years has there been any indication that Brunetti is interested in making a lot of money. She doesn't like crimes against women. He does not like the abuse of inferiors. He likes equality. Therein lies my American ethic. He writes: "I have lived my life without having a real job or hiring a pension plan or settling in a specific place; Instead, I've had uncompromising fun." What and with whom have you had fun during your life? Meeting interesting people who could teach me things. And with music. I don't know how to play any instrument, but emotionally I respond very strongly to music. I am fortunate to have discovered this in the early years of my life and, over time, I have become involved in the production of baroque music. And gastronomy. Also. My relationship with food is very similar to what I have with music. I know when it's good and I know how it's done, but when I try it doesn't work so well. I make pasta with mushrooms, but it's not as good as the one I eat out there. Through the Gotthard tunnel I always carry, as 'contraband' products, chocolate when I go to Italy and cheese when I travel to Zurich. I just returned three days ago from Venice and in my suitcase there were four very large pieces of Parmesan and one of Pecorino. And when I return to Venice next week, I'm going to take five jars of jam. Food is love. You in your book talk about the influence among Americans of your generation of the "Protestant work ethic." To what extent did this learning influence you to carve out a path as a writer? She was an applied student. I got scholarships and paid attention to what there was to learn. And I've always worked everything I've done. I'm very interested in people who make things. Being a butcher, making clothes or knowing how to work silk deserves respect. Work does people good, although I seem to live in the nineteenth century when I say this. He left the United States in 1967. Would I come back?No. Politically it is horrible, a disaster. I read New York newspapers and am amazed at how vulgar everything has become: the behavior, the language. Now what people are interested in are trivialities, such as the lives of famous people who have invented themselves. I can't even make a list of what I find strange about that country. In Europe I find many more interesting things. But that public degradation he mentions, aggravated by Donald Trump, has been extrapolated to Europe. There are many Trumps in Europe. We don't seem to learn from history. We have already seen what the latest crop of 'strongmen' brought to the world. They say they are for justice and freedom, but then they go to parliament to change the laws in their favor.ales of 2024? No doubt. And it would be a vote for him, not against Trump. He's an old-fashioned man. Practically, we are the same age. So I'm familiar with that kind of reasoning that happens to speak slowly. The U.S. presidency is no longer just about him, about his interests, but about the good of the country. And that can't be said for Trump. In Europe, the only real leader I can think of is Angela Merkel. Not because she agreed with all his decisions, but because she had the courage to let in asylum-seeking refugees. Although she taught in both countries, in her memoirs she is much more lenient with Iran than with Saudi Arabia.In Iran I remember that the people we dealt with and our students were always very polite and sincere. The result of a culture that dates back 2,000 years. When we were jumping through the trees, they built Persepolis. As for Saudi Arabia, I didn't find many positive experiences, so I don't have good memories of that country and it's hard for me to say anything other than that they have oil. And I don't even know if that's good.What has Italy meant to you? It made me more tolerant. Americans usually seem very friendly, but in reality they are very intolerant. We don't like things that aren't like in America. It's my country and it's given me a sense of the work ethic, of equality in the sense that all people should be treated equally. It is a country that talks about equal opportunities, but then does not comply with it in practice. Why do the rich always benefit? As for Italy, the idea of nepotism and plugs can be considered international. We have Italy and then we have the Italians. It's not the same. People are still kind, honest, decent. I've always thought that if something bad happened to me, I'd like it to be in Italy. Could it be said that ecology, corruption, the conditions of workers are some of the great themes underlying your work? To some extent, black literature serves to explain the society in which we live. And yes, those are some of the central issues in my work. The Guardian has published an investigation into pollution and it seems that in Europe we are breathing air up to ten times more polluted than it suits us. We breathe cancer daily. Despite this, many of the European governments show that there is no problem. I'm 80 years old already, so they haven't been able to with me yet. I'm pretty hard to peel, but the people who want to put the heating higher today are robbing the next generations of years of life. And we, so calm watching TV. People get angry with young people who protest, we have seen it with young people who have stuck their hands to the asphalt to stop traffic in Hamburg and Hannover. Some are still asking for more roads and more cars. Those are the criminals It's a topic that turns me on. The main goal for a politician is his re-election. So they have to do what they think people want. We have to have less, do less, travel less, and eat less and drink less. We have to shrink our world and we're not going to do it. In the light of your life experience, how do you see the changes in equality? I refer to MeToo, but also to the controversy that exists in Espadds in relation to the women's soccer team.The kiss? Yes, exactly. Last week I was at a dinner party with four or five other people. Two of them were women my age that I've known for a long time. They wondered why they kick this guy [Luis Rubiales, former president of the Spanish Football Federation] out of work and why the response is so strong. They didn't understand it. I said, well, if he had come up to you and put his hands on your breasts, would that be acceptable? Many aggressions that have been part of everyday life, said in quotation marks, are becoming visible. I don't know in Spain, but in Italy physical violence against women increases as women raise their voices in protest.

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