With his book based on the life of Sonia Gandhi raking up a storm in India, Javier Moro talks to Sukalp Sharma on the idea and concept behind a fictionalised biography. Excerpts:
To what extent do you think is the fictionalisation of the life story of a living person right? Can a biography be fictionalised?
As long as it is specified as such, I see absolutely no problem with it. The reader must know what he reads. And the writer must remain completely free in the way he chooses to tell his story. The tools, the techniques, the vision remains the writer’s essence, choice and privilege. Some subjects call for fiction, in order to be fully understood by the public. As we know, fiction can sometime bring the essence of truth, much better than dry facts and scholarly writing.
How would a reader distinguish fact from fiction in any fictionalised biography?
In my fictionalised biography, all historical facts are real and as precise as possible, as are the dates and the events. In my books, what can be seen as fiction is my style of writing?the vision and the tone. I am not an historian. I am a writer, interested in people’s emotions, as much as in dates. So sometimes, knowing what I know of their characters?and knowing it through a long research?knowing it through the knowledge of their personas, predicaments, situations and context, I can, and have to, imagine what they feel. There, and only there, imagination comes in, and, therefore, fiction!
If you had direct access to Sonia Gandhi and her immediate family in India, would you still have adopted a dramatised and fictional approach to the book? If yes, why?
Probably not. Had they collaborated, giving access to documents and allowed me to interview them and dive into primary sources, I would have been drawn to write a hard-fact biography, which was my original idea when I did not know the Gandhis. But, now I doubt it would have been a better book, as it probably would not have connected with the reader at an emotional level, which The Red Sari does.
Do you feel that Indians are a little more touchy so to say about such literature?
I don’t think it has to do with literature; it?s an issue dealing with political power. The Congress is trying to maintain the image of Sonia Gandhi on a pedestal. I am simply humanising her, my book demystifies her.