After the success of "Volver a morir" (Dead Again, 2011), the novel with the first-ever Hispanic detective as a protagonist, now being made into a TV series, writer Rosana Ubanell is back with a totally different novel, "Perdido en tu piel" (Lost in Your Skin), a suspense romance with erotic overtones. ARS had the opportunity to talk to the author.
Perdido en tu piel does have suspense, the basis of my literary world, although this time the intrigue is secondary to love, romance, and eroticism. Nelson Montero, the protagonist ofVolver a morir, will make a second appearance in 2013 and a third in 2014. But given the success of the first novel, the first edition having sold out and the second edition coming soon, my publisher, Penguin, decided to give him more time to grow before presenting the new adventures of this Cuban-American detective. Meanwhile, my passion for writing gave birth to Perdido en tu piel, a project I had been thinking about for a long time.
Many writers complain about their publishers. Do you?
In my specific case, I couldn’t be more satisfied or in better hands. Also, and very importantly, my publisher has first names and last names, flesh-and-bone people, professionals who care about the writers and help with our quirks, fears, and anxiety – which we have a lot of. We writers are also happy and fun and we write a lot of nice things as compensation. They are Carlos Azula and Erik Riesenberg.
What is the plot of Perdido en tu piel?
Basically it answers a question: what happens when a man who has lived 30 years remembering his first love is reunited with the woman who has spent 30 years trying to forget him? The strongest recollection is not memory, but feeling, and that’s what the novel is based on. Memories of two people who experienced the same thing but have different recollections because they felt it differently. The two alternate chapters, each with his or her own voice, and how different their experiences are, even though they went through them together, is striking. The story starts in the 1980s in the Mexican Port of Tampico and spills into 2010, going back and forth in time and traveling throughout the elegant streets of New York, the luxurious mansions of Los Angeles, the middle-class neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., the wild hills of Costa Rica, the jungles of Guatemala, the exclusive beaches of Marbella, and the misery and blood spilled on the streets of Tampico today.
What is your experience as a Spanish-language writer in the United States?
Let’s say it’s special. I am the product of different cultures. I was born and grew up in Spain. I moved to the United States, to Washington, D.C., because of my profession as a journalist. For twelve years I was immersed in a world very different from the one I had known before. Later I moved to Miami, where I have lived for a decade. This city is a Latin American port at which the most beautiful and tragic stories you could ever hear, arrive. My literature is the same, the fruit of this cultural crossroad. The protagonists of Perdido en tu piel clearly reflect that mix of roots that enriches us so much, at the same time as it makes us crazy, not letting us belong to one side nor the other.
