Afonso Cruz, the Portuguese writer who is almost Colombian

When Portugal was the guest of honor at the Bogotá International Book Fair, Afonso Cruz had already been translated into Spanish and the first of his books that had arrived in the country was circulated under the Alfaguara seal. With Jesus Christ drank beer, the Portuguese writer made his way through the shelves of local bookstores. He made a good impression at that fair and soon a Colombian publisher would be interested in his work. Now, a few years later, several of his works are available nationwide thanks to Panamericana Editorial.

Cruz is one of the most versatile writers in contemporary Portuguese literature. He has written everything from children's books to totalizing novels. It's also music. He plays guitar very well and even has a course at Domestika. He is one of the authors who will participate in the new edition of FilBo, after doing so for the last time in 2019. It was for that year that I met him personally and was able to interview him. He had already read it and following the publication of his book La muñeca de Kokoschka, with Panamericana, we talked. I saved the talk over the years, waiting for a precise moment to deliver it to the readers. I think the time has come now because with this one, there will be seven times he comes to the country, it can be said that he is almost Colombian. Well, he even speaks better Spanish than I do.

Here, then, is what emerged from that meeting.

How did this idea of writing a book about a man trying to avoid contact with the inevitability of absence?

The original idea is based on a letter I read. It had been written by Oskar Kokoschka and was addressed to a doll maker. It's the most beautiful love letter I've ever read, because it doesn't speak of love in a direct way. He's very technical with language. He talks about the wrinkles that get on her skin when she bends her arms and things like that. Only a person who is very much in love could remember these very small details. I thought she was very beautiful. The story, then, of Kokoschka's Doll is the narration of an infinite act of love that has its encounter through art. What is art but an attempt at creation. This is what Kokoschka does with his doll, who creates it with the intention of bringing his beloved to life, making her as close as possible to her.

Did your writing, compared to your other works, pose any additional challenges?

Actually, no. Or I don't think so. What happened, and I understand it today, is that having in mind that it would be a complex novel, in terms of its structure, I already knew everything I needed to write it. It's like when a mouse has spent time in a maze and from so much going through it, it already knows all the ways. It is no longer lost. It was much more complete when I sent the original manuscript to my editor. There was no order in the times, the novel was not chronological. She told me that it would be difficult to read and with her speech we managed to reduce that level of complexity, to order what I wanted to tell. He lacked perspective before that, but it was still labyrinthine, which was a bit what I wanted.

The plot of this book poses an almost essential question: Are our lives a mere imitation of art?

I think so. Art is a kind of mirror of who we are as humans. Sometimes it even surpasses us. Everything we do, in some way, is imitation of something else. Our dynamics are not natural. To eat we use cutlery, to cover ourselves we put on clothes. It would be natural for us to eat with our hands and walk around naked. That's how we started, but we resisted that nature and tried to manipulate it, recreate it. Our lives are artifice and artifice is something artistic.

And speaking of art, what does this book owe to music?

A lot. I'm a musician, in and of itself. All my books are full of music. Characters who live their lives around it or songs that frame a story. Music is in everything, it is in us and it is in books. It marks the course of our lives.

What can Afonso Cruz readers expect in this work?

I'm not interested in leaving messages. That's what I'm going with the mailman for. The only thing I hope is that my concerns as a writer, my concerns, will find reception. It's every writer's destiny.

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