c‘is still the scent of Bolivia in the corner of Italy where Ada and Paula, mother and (almost) daughter, the latter herself about to give birth to a child – find themselves coming to terms with the past. Behind them is the mystery of the disappearance of Nancy, Paula’s real motherraised as a babysitter in Ada’s family and soon became a sister to her.
Ivana Librici was born and lives in Genoa with her Bolivian husband and their three children. With Il liglio d’acqua you won the second edition of LetteraFutura, reserved for budding writers.
Ivana Librici, with The water lily (Solferino), novel written in the magical style of South America, takes us into an enigmatic story full of love which revolves around the theme of inheritance. The novel, winner of the second edition of Future Letterthe national literary fellowship reserved for first-time female writers, with insistent pace joins the present and the past in a reckless paso doble, leading us into a whirlwind of dreamed and real landscapes and faces, which starts from the escape from Germany of former Nazi officers and descends into abysses where history continues to repeat itself, while it believes it is renewing itself.
The water lily: from Germany to Latin America
A story that starts from afar, geographically and historically. How was it born?
I had in mind to write a story halfway between a dream and a memory. There are therefore realistic elements, such as the escape of former Nazi gendarmes and their racial purity plans taken up in Latin America, and fictional parts. The scenario of Bolivia comes to me from my husband’s side, who is from that country and we have often returned to it together. So I had that natural landscape and its primordial fascination in my eyes.
the water lily by Ivana Librici, Solferino224 pages, €16.50
In this background we witness the fraternal friendship between a peasant girl, Nancy, and Ada, daughter of a wealthy family. Does she tell us about it?
This friendship is possible due to the fact that they spent their childhood together and as children they do not feel the social differences. Nancy arrived in Ada’s family as a babysitter for her little brother when she was still a child herself, things that happen in Latin America. For Ada, therefore, she is the closest contemporary of hers and feels like a sister. As they grow up, their fate separates them, as Ada marries an Italian and flies to Europe with him. The “blood oath” they have made will remain alive through Paula, Nancy’s daughter who will grow up with Ada as a daughter.
Opposite this female love triangle is a male universe with rather prevaricating traits. Can you introduce us to some of these characters?
Giovanni, Ada’s husband, is the one who, entering the scene, breaks the balance between Ada and Nancy. At the beginning of the book we find him already separated from Ada, but he continues to play a paternal role for Paula. I wanted to show that it’s not the same thing to be a father and a partner. While Julio, the nephew of a former SS man, does not assume responsibility for the children he brings into the world with the campesinas, entirely absorbed in his program of race and pleasure. The parish priest Gringo, a folkloric figure, who also came from Germany, introduces this element of sexual exploitation of women and machismo, very widespread in the countries of South America.
How does Nazi history enter your story?
Pseudoscientific documents exist to testify that, even before the advent of Nazism in Europe, there was the belief that the true origin of the Indians was Aryan, therefore some former Nazis tried again the project of creating a superior race to give order to the new world with crossbreeding between indigenous people and Germans in Latin America. Nazism, due to geographical distance, did not experience there with the same gaze that we have, who experienced its tragedy up close. Light skin and eyes, in a world so divided into classes, still have an impact of superiority and, also due to the myth of a Europe that resists, this neo-Nazism in some cases has found fertile ground to take root. I tell one of these cases, mixing it with fiction.
The plot of the novel alternates the past and the present, the pregnancy of Paula and Nancy on parallel tracks. What differentiates them?
Having in mind to tell between dream and wakefulness, linear time jumps. Therefore more time planes overlap. This parallelism between Nancy’s story and that of her daughter Paula also gives us the opportunity to see the difference: in the end, even though in an unexpected pregnancy, Paula also has a side of love.
This double step gives an idea of cyclicity. Of legacy that returns. Where can progress come from?
It’s true, in the small of the stories of the characters and in the great of history there are these cycles that repeat themselves. However, it is up to the individual to somehow free himself from the limits of a marked track and carry on a different story. Paula is also a bit of this.
Is your style magical because the setting requires it, or does the setting bring the magic?
As García Márquez wrote, it is not the literature of those places that is magical, but reality itself is. It is a different way of seeing the world, less rational than the Western one, but no less true for this. Also to convey this specific sensuality I use many words in the original language, so that the story does not only come to mind, but is also music.
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