Carlos Salem, the king of Spanish crime fiction (born in Burzaco)

The writer Carlos Salem He was born in Burzaco, raised between Buenos Aires and Neuquén, and has lived in Spain for over thirty years , where he has built up a vast and recognized body of work . A journalist by trade and a storyteller of various genres, he only published his first novel in 2007 and hasn't stopped since: today he has more than fifty titles including fiction, poetry, and comics . His literature is circulated in Spanish and also in translations into French, German, Italian, Swiss, and Italian, with a particular reception in France, where he enjoys a wide following. He could be one of his characters: goatee, slightly gypsy scarf on his head, a gaze that detects more than it shares.

Now he's returning to Argentina , not as a tourist but as an author, presenting three recent books in his home country: the novel " Nobody Drowns Three Times ," the reissue of "The Girl with Green Hair," and the comic "Who Killed the Big Bad Wolf?" (Crime Scene), co-authored with Iñaki Echeverría. With these works, Salem once again crosses the genre divide and confirms his predilection for detective and adventure fiction.

During her stay, she will speak with colleagues and readers at various events . On Wednesday, September 24th at 7:00 PM, she will participate in the National Library with Claudia Piñeiro , and on Friday, October 3rd, she will participate in Buenos Aires Black Week, where she will share the stage with Juan Sasturain and Ernesto Mallo . But before all that, a conversation with Viva takes place.

–Tell us your own story: where were you born, where did you spend your childhood and adolescence?

–I was born in Burzaco, raised in the capital until I was 9 or 10, and then I moved to Neuquén with my parents. At 27, I went to Spain. There, I worked as a journalist and edited provincial newspapers. When I was 10, I had to make the decision to be an astronaut or Batman, and I decided I was going to be a novelist. And when I was 12, I wrote a novel that was unreadable. I thought it was so bad that I burned it because it didn't have the quality I wanted. I kept living, kept reading, and was never in a hurry to publish: I started when I was 47, in 2007.

–Why did you get into police work?

–I really like the genre. My first novel, called Camino de ida , didn't have a single death, but it won the award for best first crime novel written in Spanish at the Semana Negra (Black Week) in June. Right now, I'm working on a series of four novels, very much in my style, where the most important thing is the characters' stories. My novels are crime novels because they tell stories about the streets these days. Crime fiction is the genre I consider most political, but I have to make a caveat: when people say, 'I'm going to read this novel so I can find out about drug trafficking,' I tell them, 'Better watch a documentary, read the newspaper, get informed,' because the novel is fiction. I play on credibility, not verisimilitude; human beings are vulnerable and we do absurd things. Life, like crime fiction, is unpredictable.

–What is your reading pact with your readers?

–That they don't have to reveal me, that the plot is well-crafted, that you don't expect it, that it surprises you, that you don't guess it, that you get excited. I work a lot with emotions, but I don't believe in thrillers, which are only difficult for their own sake. I lost a girlfriend because of Darín and Nine Queens : we went to see it in Madrid, and I guessed it, I told her, and she dumped me that night. That's why film is more difficult; good film noir is more complex because you have everything in plain sight. On the other hand, in a novel you put in a character, they come out this way, they come out that way, you can put things together; in film you're seeing everything at the same time. In a crime novel, what you want is to try to get closer to the truth beyond achieving justice; you want to know why things are done.

–You also write poetry, comics, other genres...

–Yes, I wrote a novel that was like a romantic comedy, which I really enjoyed and sold very well in Spain, but people ask you, 'But how do you write a crime novel and poetry?' I have 14 books of poetry, and for me, any novel that doesn't have lyricism is an essay. Hemingway has lyricism, even if he's laconic with his language. So do Soriano, Borges, and Cortázar.

–In your novel there is a Rocamadur, written like that.

–The characters often tell me 'no, no, I'll continue.' Usually, when I start, I don't like my characters and then I end up loving them. I put them through their paces, I let them go through those tests, and very magical things happen because when I start writing a novel I know everything, I mean, I know quite a few things and I know how it's going to end, I have the voice, but the fun part is how I write everything else: between one stone and another, in a very wide river, I can't jump 10 meters, so I'll have to make one stone and another and another to build the story. It happened to me with the woman with gray hair, who wasn't in my original plan, but suddenly I passed in front of a house, the dog whined, and that character came to me. Luckily, we have the Moviola so we can go back and adjust.

–What was the challenge of your novel The Tango of the Repentant Torturer ?

–It's a very tough novel, with a very risky structure. There's no smile in it because the subject matter didn't allow it, nor did I want to. You write according to what the story asks of you; detective fiction is very generous. It takes place during the dictatorship. And my world fell apart when the dictatorship came, because I lived through the turmoil of the late 60s and early 70s, and everything changed very quickly, and I didn't quite understand it. I had been to the Student Union at my school, and one day the custodian told me I had to talk to my mom and told her it was better if I 'did myself a little.' I was 16 in '76. The coup, like all coups, served the ruling classes. Even today, they still try to convince the middle class that there's room at the banquet in the attic above, that if we stay downstairs, we might get the crumbs, but mostly we get the garbage. And there's no room, and if there is, it'll be for a cousin, someone's brother with a palindrome surname, or something like that. This is happening all over the world. I always refused to believe that human beings were corrupt by nature; now I'm starting to have doubts.

–In the novel Nobody Drowns Three Times, adventure is the key, right?

–Yes, that's why I dedicate it to Robin Hood, who taught me so much. I also remember Nippur of Lagash, which my mother and I used to read a lot. In crime novels, the social situation matters because the social denunciation is sometimes about what society does to the individual: in a very broad sense, the murderer is always the system, what the system has done. I think the novel is an exercise in telling stories.

–Why do you think they generate so much interest in Spain and France?

–I think there's a way of seeing things that has to do with being national, in a way, with the Argentine way of looking at things. I think we have a very varied series of influences. I'm not saying there aren't references there, but the ultimate reference is Don Quixote, which is fine, but it's been 500 years. The originality of someone like Osvaldo Soriano, for example, is unique. We have a very ironic way of seeing life. That anecdote they always tell about Soriano, about when he was hired to take care of ducks in a park in Belgium and he asked his friends to steal a duck because otherwise his job wouldn't make sense. That only occurs to an Argentine, a Latin American: 'I take care of ducks, but if none of them disappear, they'll fire me.' I also really like Raymond Chandler and Conrad, because they create superhuman characters.

• Born in Burzaco in 1959, she is a novelist, poet, and journalist. She has published 50 books in Spanish since she began publishing in 2007. Her fiction has also been published in France (where she is widely recognized), Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Argentina.

• Salem worked as a journalist in Argentina and in Spain he has been responsible for media such as El Faro de Ceuta and El Telegrama , in addition to being a regular contributor to other national and international media.

• He has published several collections of poems and short story anthologies, although it is in the field of crime fiction where he has excelled.

• He has won, among other awards, the Silverio Cañada Memorial at the Semana Negra de Gijón for the first crime novel in Spanish, Novelpol, Paris Noir, Mandarache, the Seseña International Novel Prize, Valencia Negra, and Violeta Negra, in addition to being a finalist on several occasions for the Dashiell Hammett Prize and the Prix 813, SCNF in France, among others, thanks to novels such as Camino de ida, Matar y guardar la ropa, Pero sigo siendo el rey, Cracovia sin ti, and Muerto el perro . His work has also been published in French and English.