Becoming a writer

When I was eight. I wrote a very long and very repetitive homework for the school, and I simply didn’t want to stop writing. The magic was the writing itself. Through writing worlds opened for me. I am myself only when I write.  

In my work, I want to talk about the falling apart of a chaotic family amid the incontrollable forces of history. I am also interested in the power and powerlessness of every ideology, the responsibility of any human being to remain human, to remain true to himself or herself, if he or she knows who this himself or herself is (It's not always evident.) And I also want to talk about a wonderful mother, a beautiful person, who could, even with the best of intentions, betray some of the values she professed to be hers. 

Literature  and books

I think literature is magic. A sphere of the possible. Light in the night. A mirror. A person’s universal solitude. Passion, music. 

Books have the potential of bringing a clarity of vision, attaining clarity through understanding others (other worlds) that are fundamentally different from mine. Or understanding that behind that fundamental difference there is something essentially common. 

One of my books has been translated into Spanish. The title is El expediente de mi madre, published by Anagrama in 2019. It is about my mother and father, who have become agents of the communist regime, who were Jews, immigrants, communists and lost souls. 

To the people attending Gudalajara Book Fair

I love when people have the patience to read a book to the end, in the lamplight, or sitting in a park, in silence, and not reading it on a computer screen. Reading a book is not something passive. It is one of the most rewarding and refined activities in the world.