The Argentinian writer rediscovers his family roots in the new edition of his best book. The story of ‘Mamá’ (Alfaguara) begins twenty years ago

Jorge Fernández Díaz accepted the challenge posed by his good friend Arturo Pérez-Reverte: to write an adventure novel. The Argentine rolled up his sleeves, began to think it over, came out with a few pages… but the words foundered. “I felt like I was writing for just one reader, Arturo, and it didn’t make any sense to me. I had a creative crisis. On top of that came the other crisis in 2001, the ‘corralito’. A social crisis that reporter Fernández Díaz fought by leaving the city and planting his journalism in the middle of the Pampas - "it’s raw and real out there, the drug trafficker comes to see you with their mother, as well as the politician you’re writing about". The story of ‘Mamá’ casts his biographical roots across the Pampas ("it’s a desert"). His mother gets depressed and goes to therapy. There was improvement, but something did not chime. “I asked him what was wrong, and she told me that the doctor was weeping... And I thought, golly, my mother can make a disaster-fixer cry!”

Read more here: ABC CULTURA