he Singer and writer Gerard Quintana (Girona, 1964). Today, Monday, he presents his third novel, “Purity of Deception” (Kolomna), which revolves around A A big lie and the admiration it aroused in the author.
It is a fictional story inspired by a real event experienced by Quintana himself which was the seed of the story. The novel's events revolve around the Cuban poet Antoine Lopez, who in the early 1990s managed to escape from the Caribbean island and settled in Girona.
The character has the entire city in his pocket thanks to his mastery of theater and amazing improvisational ability. But one day a man appears who introduces himself as the real Antoine, and the real and the impostor disappear forever.
The novel begins with Girona director Claudi Carretta recounting a trip to Cuba, immersed in the “special period” after the fall of the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s. There he will meet Antoine, a young award-winning poet, who will be able to escape the Caribbean island and move to Girona.
With this pretext, Quintana constructs a choral narrative that moves between lies, both false things and unsaid things. The protagonist is Carita, who reaches the world of cinema thanks to the strength of his family. The director hides secrets in a plot where deception swirls throughout the book.
One of the book's prominent themes is access to love and sex, an issue that concerns Quintana. The author complains that children nowadays learn about sexuality through pornography.
After 30 years of having the idea in his head, Quintana published a novel that was not easy for him to produce, and it promises to be easier to read than its predecessors because it does not make time jump.
He explained in a press conference that in this novel he did not undertake a complex documentation process as in the other two novels. He also said that the challenge was to work on the psychology of the characters and put himself in the shoes of someone he is not. “How do I put myself into the psychology of the characters and their complicity when they deceive themselves in order to move forward,” he stressed.
Quintana remembered Antoine's real personality, who synchronized with him and interacted with him. He added: “From the moment he disappeared, my admiration for him was enormous. I wanted to talk to him without the mask and tell him that he is my hero.”
He also explained that the work contextualizes Cuba through the eyes of the present and deals with themes with many layers, such as family. Also the place of Girona, common in all three novels, where you can see how a city with an old “risky” neighborhood goes to gentrification.
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