Madrid, winter of 1978: while the Central Information Brigade focuses on the sensational case of a serial killer, two of its investigators will face a criminal war in the underworld and, also, their own demons in a police force still filled with Francoist elements.
In this making of José Manuel del Río explains how he wrote Histeria (Ediciones B).
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It is written from conflict, often selfishness, shamelessly stealing the time you would dedicate to others, always alone, in silence, while around there is more noise and fewer “things” happening. Because we remain hidden behind screens that buzz, light up, filled with conversations chopped up by thumbs, interrupted by the urgency of those who work in the media and who, moreover, demand immediate responses to their lies. So, promoting a book through screens has its appeal, which I suspect authors of earlier generations manage to spare themselves; however, writing about the creative experience recalls a time when I began writing fiction, which is not really fiction, though I cannot name it differently.
Histeria is a novel finished during the pandemic and updated in recent months that unfolds in the, forgive the adjective, vibrant Madrid of 1978. I have not found a more recent time like that in which decades pass in days, but perhaps those who are so dissatisfied with the present will face the same doubt as its protagonists: whether what we call progress can alter the past or has only managed to reproduce the same stories in other contexts. The story of this novel alternates between 1978 and 1996. Not as someone abandoning one era to enter another, but as someone discovering that both continue to speak to one another. Histeria also wanted to be a work about what deserves to be told before its last witnesses disappear. In short, about the names that stopped being spoken. About memory as the last form of resistance.
Ultimately, to create a book, from today an object, means handing it over unconditionally to others. Let its characters and actions go out into the open, a tangible reality in the end, where others will give it a reading that may be different, but just as legitimate as the author’s. And up to this point, it is worth noting that the novel contains killers, not-so-good and not-so-bad police, small-time crooks, ultras, punks, lots of music, lots of swagger, cliffhangers aplenty and, despite this text, a few moments of comedy.
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Author: José Manuel del Río. Title: Histeria. Publisher: Ediciones B. Available at: Todos tus libros.