The Author´s comments on his work

Author’s Vision

A writer confronts appearances that conceal the truth, the masks that human beings wear, and, disquieted by a reality that he repudiates, investigates, satirizes, laughs – sometimes sarcastically – or simply allows his reason to smile.  To achieve his ends, he has only the waiting blank page, inciting him to avenge fortune’s injustices, as Stendhal said, or to build another reality, one without appearances or masks, denouncing the world’s dishonesty, immorality, or debasement, roundly condemning them, as contemporary critic Santos Sanz Villanueva said of my novel Germánico. At this point in world history, ready access to information allows the public to become aware of the bad acts of men and women who – either in government or at the heights of economic power –  allow their individual interests to predominate over those of the community. For this reason, protest movements of all stripes – such as the “Indignados” (the Outraged) –  are emerging. In such a situation, what are authors to do? Follow the market and bait the mass of readers who unconsciously desire another reality, perhaps a “remedy”? Or make their pens shine as brightly as Tristan’s torches?

The literary arts, as is the case with all arts, allow men to convert reality’s darker points into light, and to give them the authentic pleasure of true friendship, true love, and to ennoble their suffering, purifying humanity of the relentlessly oppressive horrors to which it is subject and abolishing the idolotrous splendor of power, money, and sex, – and turning its face to universal love.

Ethics are the backbone of a work of art. Without them, the reader cannot consent to what the author expresses, unless the author distances himself from what he writes or tacitly demonstrates his disagreement. For this reason, in all of my novels the unifying thread is a concern for moral and economic justice; it permits light to shine on the description of man’s injustices and outrages. This light is the writer’s voice.