Fantastic Metropolis

Gabriel Mesa: I understand that Kalpa Imperial was first published in 1983, so that it’s actually twenty years old this year. What do you think finally led to it being translated and published in English after all this time?

Angélica Gorodischer: Our publishing industry has so many ups and downs that seeing a book rereleased is fairly remote. Suddenly Ursula Le Guin read the text and told me she was going to translate some stories. I almost died of delight. She had been translating Borges and between Kalpa stories she also translated various Latin American poets. I believe that there may lie the secret of Kalpa’s publication in the United States.

Gabriel Mesa: The genre of fantastic literature in Latin American is often identified with “magical realism,” where fantasy mixes with a certain social and political reality that is particular to the region and its history. I view Kalpa Imperial a bit differently. With the exception of one section where reference is made to certain music and movie stars of our world, the vast empire of Kalpa Imperial takes place in its own universe, far from ours, although perhaps not entirely isolated. In this manner I find it closer to the fantastical creations of Calvino, Borges and Kafka than of García Marquez, Vargas Llosa or Isabel Allende. What do you think?

Angélica Gorodischer: There is no magical realism in Argentina. The narrative of this country is an urban narrative, if you discount the “gaucho literature” that of course was not written by gauchos but by very rich and important gentlemen who wrote from their position as the masters of the estate. Everything else is urban narrative. If magical realism has been written in Argentina, it does not have any roots in our reality (with the exception of “Los Viernes de la Eternidad” (“The Fridays of Eternity”), by María Granata). There is, of course, a great deal of fantastic fiction, including SF, but no magical realism. And thank you, thank you, thank you, for putting me on the side of Borges and Calvino and Kafka, who are writers whom I respect enormously, and not on the side of those other writers you mention, whom I absolutely do not respect at all, at all, at all.

Gabriel Mesa: Another question, somewhat related to the earlier one. Tolkien was said to become very irritated if The Lord of the Rings was ever interpreted allegorically. Does Kalpa Imperial have any allegorical elements? I ask because I remember having read the comment of some reader that Kalpa Imperial was intended as a critique of the military dictatorship that Argentina suffered during so many years. Was this your intention?

Angélica Gorodischer: No, I don’t believe there is anything allegorical in Kalpa. Now, I did write it during the military dictatorship and maybe that comes through. Not as an allegory so much as in terms of the theme I selected, which is power. But I had no different intention when writing Kalpa than the one I always have when I write: to tell a story.

Gabriel Mesa: What authors would you say most influenced you during the writing of Kalpa? The book as such mentions Tolkien and Andersen. Are there others? I wonder in particular whether you’ve read the Irish author Lord Dunsany. I saw a certain similarity between your work in this book and his, but I ignore whether it’s intentional.

Angélica Gorodischer: Yes, of course I’ve read Lord Dunsany as I’ve read the works of so many people that write fantastic fiction. Of course, one never writes alone. One writes in the company of all one has read. Sometimes I have the sensation that someone (someone very dear) is looking over my shoulder as I write. Probably it’s someone who’s thinking, oh, what silly things this woman is writing! But the important thing is that they’re there. For example, when I wrote Prodigios (Marvels), Natalia Ginzburg was looking over my shoulder, I’m sure of that. That text gave me a lot of trouble, and I think I wouldn’t have finished it had she not been there with me. While I wrote Kalpa, Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges watched me write. I suspect they shook their heads because they didn’t like what I was doing. But still, being nice gentlemen they were supportive at all times.