We started the year with an interview given to us by the Swedish writer Mari Jungstedt (Stockholm, 1962) in his hotel in Madrid. Promote your latest novel sea of clouds (Maeva, 2015), the first of a black series with the Canary Islands as the setting. The author is famous for her Gotland series books., starring the couple composed of commissioner Anders Knutas and journalist Johan Berg, which have sold more than three million copies. In sea of clouds, in addition to the location, Another novelty is that it is written with the also writer, illustrator, Norwegian designer and musician Ruben Eliassen.
Fate brought Mari Jungstedt and Ruben Eliassen together in the Canary Islands by chance to end up being not only a literary couple.
I was in Gran Canaria writing my Gotlan novel, I was there renting a house, recently divorced after twenty-three years with my ex-husband, and I met Ruben who is also an author and we fell completely in love, ¿no? Very fast, we live together, We bought a house in Arginegín.
The origin of this novel states that it arose while they were both taking a walk..
One night we went for a walk, to go for a walk before going to bed; We have the house above the port of Arguineguin and in the port they have boat restoration, There are also ships on land that are being restored. We were walking and talking about the construction of the Canary boats that are different from the Scandinavian boats, So Ruben, he is a very curious man, He climbed a ladder to see inside a boat and when I was inside the boat he told me that he had opened the warehouse where they keep the fish.. When he was opening the warehouse I yelled at him: «Oh, there is a naked woman, dead, around fish! and he told me: “there is nothing here”. But I saw like a fragment of an idea, the spark, you can say, a spark of an idea: What I had seen was a vision of a woman there., and the book really begins with a fishing boat that is fishing in the port of Arguineguín and the fishmongers discover a dead woman naked under the Norwegian church. And that's how the idea of writing this novel began, as you can say.. After that, around, at night, we started talking: “Maybe we can write a crime novel from here”. And walking a lot by the sea and talking about the book and the characters and everything has grown, the story and all the characters.
Speaking of the characters I see certain parallels with Sara Moberg, Do you identify with her in any way??
Yeah, I think so, we have two main protagonists, or three, you can say; I think that I am more Sara and he is more Kristian, because Sara is Swedish, She is married with two children and has her home in San Agustín., works at Dag newspaper & Night (that also exists in reality) and he has his life very organized; she is a very stable person, I identify a lot with Sara, It's true.
How have you and Ruben Eliassen organized yourself to write this novel??
Rubén has an easier time with Kristian's chapters and I with Sara's, but when we work together we are in the same room, in the same office, in front of each other, but when we write we can't disturb. When I have written a chapter I send it to Ruben and when he has time he reads it., makes his comments, suggestions, changes, etc. and he sends me the chapter by email. And that's how it works, all chapters go many times, maybe ten times between us, that's why we have influence, I believe, in all chapters, of the two.
In the mornings we have a meeting and we decide what we are going to write, what chapters: “Well, I want to write this chapter...” Because we have decided on a plan, more or less, from the book, what is going to happen and all this. We have pieces of paper on the wall and each piece of paper has its chapter and each character has its color and so we can see on the wall what we are going to write. “Today I want to write this chapter”, so we decided and started writing.
Jungstedt con Eliassen initiate con sea of clouds a series but without leaving aside the saga that has made it famous. I also continued the Gotlan series, many people think it will end, but I'm working now on book thirteen in this Gotlan saga. Gotlan is also a small and quiet island and not much happens, but these are books, It is fiction and it can be, it's imagination, It's also something I like, these contrasts, that things can happen in paradise.
About those contrasts, tastes and his fondness for the noir genre, we ask him from the perspective of death, since with so much romance around it I'm sure it has an interesting concept, What concept does Mari Jungstedt have of death??
¿Yo? How do I see death? I think I'm afraid of death, I'm afraid of death and I don't understand how it works, I think I'm afraid of the dark and I think that's also one of the reasons why I write crime novels..
To understand it?
Yeah, I think so. To, how do you say?, to meet your demons.
GINÉS VERA
