Conversation with writer Paul Lynch in Dublin; Bertrand Bonello and Léa Seydoux give us “The Beast”
“We are looking for signs of the city in a state of siege, a territory of war, of disputes between a despotic state that sowed lies and was structured on fear and an army of rebels that wants to restore the previous situation, that of a modern, fragile democracy. The bridges are not blocked, the canal is free, the water runs slowly in the mirror of the sun at the end of a long May day. It’s the first warm day in Dublin after a long winter and that’s all we can talk about. Song of the Prophet took over those who read it and runs through the stone streets of the center.”
Isabel Lucas went to Dublin to talk to Paul Lynchthe author of Song of the Propheta book that received the prestigious Booker Prize in 2023 and which now arrives in Portugal.
“All my books are laments. All my fiction is a tragic vision of the world”, says the novelist in the conversation. But Song of the Prophet it is not a dystopia, as Wikipedia and other instances call it, to the irritation of the author.
It has an alternative name, narratives of trials: “The meaning of our impermanence in the universe, the meaning of the moment. I’m interested in the moment, in getting to the meaning of now. And yet, everything is passing. Everything is loss . All my books are about that. And, at the same time, they are all, in one way or another, narratives of trials.
She fled her husband (and syphilis) and joined the Spanish army without being discovered. She had sex with nuns, who accused her of a pact with the devil. The “extraordinary” story of Maria Duran is now in book form: The Hermaphrodite and the Portuguese Inquisition — The case that shook the Holy Officeby historian François Soyer.
Isabel Rio Novo He accepted a particularly cyclopean “mission”: to tell the life of Camões. He delved into the archives and traveled to “find the man who would have existed before” the myth. “It’s as if we wanted our Camões to remain shrouded in his mist, in his mystery”, says Rio Novo, who had already biographed Agustina Bessa-Luís, in conversation with Hugo Pinto Santos.
The director Bertrand Bonello (The Zombie Child, Saint Laurent) adapts Henry James to greater glory by Léa Seydoux into a bold and obsessive film. In a quick interview with Jorge Mourinha, she explained how fear and love are central themes of The beast.
Also in this Epsilon:
Theater: Zenith by Sílvio Vieira and the version by A Tram Named Desire by Bruno Bravo (text only available, for now, on printed edition);
The post-apocalyptic (but hopeful) photography of Todd Hido;
New albums Mabe Fratti, Alek Rein e The June Carriers;
… Among other things. Happy reading!
Ípsilon no Spotify: our choices; Readings: our book website; Cinecartaz: everything about cinema
