Three years after ‘El ruido nos separa nos’, the literary debut of Pedro Aranda (Cartagena, 1979), with which he was a finalist in several crime novel competitions, the author publishes his second book, ‘Casi Chicago’ (Indie Books) . A story marked by the helplessness of some individuals haunted by the past with which he approaches the literary current of dirty realism. “This is where authors like Bukowski, Salinger, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford come from, one of my favorites, and I try to tell people’s lives and everyday lives without restraint and give the protagonists qualities that are a little bit different from the typical protagonist of the movie novels, which makes them closer to anti-heroes,” he explains. Why are you so attracted to dirty realism? -Basically because, apart from the distances, I think I identify a lot with that type of character. Then When I started writing ‘Almost Chicago’ I transferred certain personal experiences to the novel, which is not autobiographical, but I find much coherence in that style than in others.—In ‘Almost Chicago’ the reader is introduced to Randy Sullivan. What’s the character like?-As I said, people who know me well say that the story is too similar to my life, of course there is some of that, although not everything necessarily happened to me or in that order. He has a comfortable life. He works for a large financial company in the United States. Life has dealt him good cards – I am trying to distinguish him from the typical anti-hero – but he is an apathetic person and shows no interest in anything. When they force him to leave the house, something happens to him that changes his routine. He gets excited about a person but ends up getting into many entanglements. Double concept – Why did you call it ‘Almost Chicago’? –The novel is still a journey through several cities in the United States. It starts in New York and continues in Los Angeles. The name Chicago is always there. The protagonist never ends up going there for various reasons. On the other hand, for him, Chicago is not just a city, sometimes it is someone. I play with that double concept. Have you always been fascinated by the United States? -Always. One trip I want to take is Route 66, stopping at roadside motels with empty swimming pools, surrounded by police cordons, because there was a murder days ago.
Source: La Verdad
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