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| Fernanda Melchor |
In Conversation
‘It’s easy to forget the power of words in an era ruled by profuse, beautiful and entrancing images.’
24th February 2020
There’s no denying that Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season includes distressing stories of the very basest human behaviours. At the same time, thanks to the striking authenticity of the voices contained within it, the novel embodies a great human act of compassion, in that its author truly listens without prejudice to what literary critic Helen Vassallo has called ‘the monsters we make’.
The Oscar-winning film director Bong Joon-ho recently wrote some lines that I find as true of Hurricane Season as of his masterpiece Parasite, ‘. . . who can point their finger at a struggling family, locked in a fight for survival, and call them parasites? It’s not that they were parasites from the start. They are our neighbours, friends and colleagues, who have merely been pushed to the edge of a precipice.’ Fernanda Melchor goes with her characters to the edge of the precipice. As her English translator, I followed her there and was left changed and with many questions about her method and influences, manipulating readers, and the unavoidable lure of darkness. We touched upon some of these topics in during the following conversation, in English, in late January 2020.—Sophie Hughes
