VIDEO TONINO BENACQUISTA LOCKDOWN
Tonino Benacquista VIDEO LINK from lockdown in PARIS.
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VIDEO LEONARDO PADURA LOCKDOWN FROM HAVANA
Here is Leonardo Padura in lockdown speaking from his home in Havana: LINK
ERNESTO MALLO LOCKDOWN Q&A from BADALONA, SPAIN
- Do you have any local stories of kindness or good deeds that you can share?
In Spain, and the rest of Europe you can sense a strong anti-migrant feeling more or less explicit. Almost all the paramedics, cleaning and support personnel are Latin Americans. Dominicans, Mexicans, Argentinians and so on. Working very long hours, for a miserable salary, always a smile behind the mask, always attentive and efficient.
PAUL THOMAS LOCKDOWN in NEW ZEALAND Q & A
Which historical writer would you find it difficult to be self-isolating with and why?
This is a tough one but I can’t go past Norman Mailer. In an Observer piece from the early 1980s, reproduced in his collection The Moronic Inferno, Martin Amis wrote that “for some reason or other, Mailer spent the years between 1950 and 1980 in a tireless quest for a fistfight.” Amis described a 700-page oral biography of Mailer as “strewn with vicious confrontations, drunken couplings, ostentatious suicide bids, cruel human manipulations, incessant violence – and incessant cant.” After a few days of that, I think I’d take my chances with COVID-19.
SERGIO BIZZIO LOCKDOWN Q&A
How are these surreal days influencing your normal writing process?
Well, I don't write anything. What can be done other than not writing? I have been locked up for thirty days and the only thing I have been able to do in that time is dedicate myself a little to my garden, discard books from my library, and read. Not much more than that.
TONINO BENACQUISTA LOCKDOWN Q&A
Is there a local dish or comfort food that you are eating more regularly at the moment, to get you through these turbulent times?
A dish, no. But from time to time a little scotch doesn't hurt…
ANITA NAIR LOCKDOWN INTERVIEW
How are these surreal days influencing your normal writing process?
I have been working from home for almost two decades now, so I have had plenty of time to get used to the situation. However, the challenge now is to work in a home bustling with noise and activity. So I find myself having to eke time out of my writing to do my share of household chores. The first ten days were a long haul. Now I think the Stockholm Syndrome has kicked in and I have a routine of sorts. And I discover that I am writing much longer hours than I ever used to.
GARRY DISHER LOCKDOWN Q&A
What are the little things that are getting you through this extraordinary time?
I live alone and greatly miss social contact. I would dearly love to give my daughter a hug, but she lives in the city and we don’t want to endanger each other and the police might stop me if I drive up to see her. I make do with a once-a-week beach walk with a friend—only one is allowed and we must keep two metres apart. Otherwise, I read, work, watch junk TV in the evenings, keep physically active and busy when I’m not writing, and phone friends a great deal more often.
BEN PASTOR ESSAY--what is a man like Martin Bora doing in the uniform he wears?
Detection, I am beginning to understand after seven novels and with number eight in progress, becomes for Martin Bora part of the business of living. Note: not of his military business (he is not a professional investigator, and often his inquiries are accidental), but of the very way he sets himself before reality. He is curious, attentive, notices the minutiae, the seemingly irrelevant detail; his senses are alert and his mind sensible and discriminating: his ideal brothers are in equal measure Natty in The Last of the Mohicans and the even-tempered Marlow in Heart of Darkness. The only literary investigator with whom he shares a recognizable trait - a tranquil melancholy veined with humor - is very different from him: Police Inspector Maigret.