Published at the literary magazine BCN Ink in February 2013, by Ryan Chandler

Guidebook Terror

Born in Germany and raised in São Paulo, Stefanie Kremser cut her teeth as a screenwriter for TV and cinema, including the German police series Tatort. Her crime novel Die Toten Gassen Von Barcelona was published in Spanish and Catalan last year as El Carrer dels Oblidats (Street of the Forgotten) to wide acclaim. The book introduces the fortuitous detective Anna Silber who comes to Barcelona to write an alternative guidebook and finds herself embroiled in a murder mystery which falls somewhere between Lonely Planet and the travails of the martyred Santa Eulàlia...

In the story, Anna comes to the city on the pretext of writing an ‘alternative guidebook’ but ends up becoming an amateur detective. And yet, by the time the book has finished, it has, in some way, become that alternative guidebook (els okupes, cuina moderna, La Penya Espanyolista, Radio Bronka): was this an intentional ploy?

Yes, I really hoped the novel would have this ‘side effect’. In the end, though, I do not reveal any secret places which could be invaded by, say, mad crowds of readers, because they have actually all been closed (and because I have no mad crowds of readers). In this sense, Anna’s alternative guidebook becomes a nostalgic farewell to many interesting places Barcelona has lost lately, mainly because of unaffordable rents – which closes the thematic circle, as the main issue in the novel is Barcelona’s suffering under the pressure of speculation.

Does your implicit criticism of issues such as gentrification reflect a personal opinion?

I actually believe that gentrification can be positive for a neighbourhood, if it’s controlled – in both kinds of neighbourhoods, the run-down as well as the posh: if you have a healthy mixture of social classes, for example schools will be socially mixed, too, which is positive for the quality of education. Ghettos could be avoided; immigrants (or at least their children) could have an easier adaptation to the new city or country... I say this having experienced a childhood and youth in a much more extreme and very elitist society, in São Paulo. Where I grew up, my neighbourhood and school were for high class or upper middle class kids only. Rich and poor lived completely apart, and it’s hard for everyone to develop any kind of understanding of the other. And of course the rich had better education, better health attention, better food, better clothes, etc..., while the poor had to take what they got, having to rely on what the government offers. Public service was very bad then, and it’s still not as good as it wants to be.

But I don’t agree with gentrification based on real estate speculation, which is the one I criticize in my novel. I’ll tell you another example from Brazil: in preparation for the World Cup and the Olympic Games, the latest fashion for international investors is to buy land in Rio’s slums which crawl up the hills (the favelas in Rio have the best views to the city). Foreign hipsters are moving there already – that, to me, is a brutal and cynical form of gentrification, because it immediately imports high-end shops, etc. to a neighbourhood whose inhabitants can’t afford any of this.

Although their two Barcelonas are very different, there are similarities between Pepe Carvalho and Anna in the way that the crime novel is combined with urban critique. Are you familiar with Montalban’s character?

I still haven’t read any of the Pepe Carvalho novels, which is a shameful confession. But I already know so much about him! He, as well as his creator Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, are a legend for me. I already have some of his novels at home; I’ve saved them for reading after publishing my own crime novel. I had a real fear that I would completely be absorbed by Pepe Carvalho, and that he and his view on Barcelona would have too much influence on me. I guess it’s really a question of huge respect towards the master... I’ll enjoy him now. And I know I'll learn a lot and probably wish I’d read him before writing Anna Silber’s story.

The description of the city itself is very much the ‘new’ Barcelona: immigrants, lots of different nationalities, drunk tourists, celebrity chefs, perhaps even the idea of a gay couple of whom one is the police inspector. Is this the way you see/have seen the city since your arrival a decade ago?

I came to Barcelona ten years after the Olympic Games. Everyone keeps telling me how much the city has changed since then, but I have only known it like this: Barcelona with its wonderful new city beaches, for instance, or Port Vell, the Moll de la Fusta... I met a Barcelona already facing the sea. It was a cosmopolitan city, with lots of different nationalities, famous chefs and a lot of cultural treasures as well as creative potential. But I was able to observe some changes, too, mainly in the form of an increase of 'not- so-good' developments; a growing excess of tourism connected to some questionable hotel constructions, the increase of street-vendors selling beer, the decay of Les Rambles, etc; then there’s the rise and fall of the real estate boom with its consequences of unaffordable mortgages, extremely high rents, cases of mobbing and speculation, illegal holiday flats, etc.

On a similar theme, does this mean for outsiders, Barcelona comes across simply as a huge cosmopolitan tourist city like so many others around the world (Rome, Paris, New York, etc.)? Perhaps this is different to the image of a would-be capital of a Catalan state that is currently in all the newspapers: how conscious were you of the ‘Catalan question’ when you were writing the book?

Indeed, Barcelona has to deal with similar questions and problems as all other capital cities do these days. We are in a global crisis, people are migrating in all directions trying to find jobs; criminal structures are growing fast, too, taking advantage of the situation. Housing, jobs and education are issues everywhere, as well as the increasing gap between rich and poor. But still, each of those cities has a story and a character of its own, and I was very aware of Barcelona being a Mediterranean harbour city, as much as I was conscious of the 'Catalan question' – although I do not mention national politics in the novel, only in hints. My small contribution was to make Anna Silber the daughter of a Catalan mother, and she speaks German and Catalan rather than Spanish. I wanted to introduce a linguistic normality and show that it is possible – and that people are glad when you speak to them in their mother tongue.

Will Anna become a regular character in a series or is this a one-off?

I believe it’s a one-off, because it’s impossible for me to keep pace with the demands of the publishing business. If you want to build up a regular character, you must have the next book ready for publishing every two, maximum every three years. As I am also a literary writer and a screenwriter, I’ve got too many projects I really love and hope to fulfil instead of concentrating only on crime novels. It’s not an easy choice, because once you have established a character with enough readers to follow the story, it must be nice to build up continuity. Any other book or film I write is, each time, a new beginning, but I like changes. In this sense, I very much admire the English ‘all-round’ writer Alan Bennett, who is well accepted as an author but crosses formats and genres.

...If you did continue with the character, would it be Anna in Barcelona or something like the series ‘A Dead man in...’ or 'M is for Murder’ where the character moves from place to place?

If I’d continued with Anna Silber, my wish would have been to send her to many different places – I mean, she writes city guidebooks! But maybe I do, one day, write a crime story which takes place in São Paulo, for example – and Anna could have an appearance as an extra. Or in Munich. Or in Cochabamba... I’ve lived in all those cities; I could and would like to write about them. Who knows? But then, it wouldn’t be a series in the traditional sense.

The idea of extracting quotes from the chapters for the beginning of each works very well – what was the inspiration for this?

Well, another thing from my Brazilian past.... In São Paulo, I used to watch the daily telenovelas, those 170-episode soap operas shown on TV. I was devoted to some of them, and I remember the ‘epílogo’, the bit to be shown after the last commercial break: it showed you the next scenes of tomorrow’s episode, like small appetizers. This is what inspired me to begin my chapters with those quotes.

You have experience of writing crime thrillers for German television – in what way has the writing of a crime novel differed from the screen work? Also, how has this experience affected your book?

Writing a novel is very different from writing a screenplay. For a film you must fit the story into a space that will last around 90 minutes, and it has to have a very clear dramaturgy. However, a novel allows you to write infinitely more freely, you can play with the narrator(s) and you don’t have to worry about stuff like the set becoming too expensive! But I have learned from my experience with the crime thrillers I wrote for television. I think it helped me in terms of building the crime plot and its linearity.

Who are your influences in terms of crime fiction? And writing in general?

In terms of crime fiction: Richard Price’s Lush life is a model for me. He wrote elegantly and authentically about the changes of New York’s Lower East Side neighbourhood. I’ve also enjoyed some Wallander novels by Henning Mankell, where the loneliness of the landscape and of Wallander himself are a constant threat. And I liked very much the strange and almost abstract Red Riding Quartet by David Peace. But I am also an old fan of charming Georges Simenon or the incredibly funny Austrian crime writer Wolf Haas...In general, I very much admire Salman Rushdie’s explosive art of storytelling and Vladimir Nabokov’s literary mastership. Both writers are an example, to me, of how to transform personal memory into something new and universal. But I also adore Jane Gardam’s wit in Old Filth, Michael Köhlmeiers clear and beautiful style in Abendland, Jeffrey Eugenides’ fictional family saga in Middlesex... Oh, and there are so many others! It’s funny though. I’ve just realized that either these authors or these books I mentioned all deal with migration. Crossing cultural, national and linguistic borders moves my life and my imagination.

So how has growing up in a different continent to Europe affected your writing when it comes to setting dramas either here in Barcelona or in Germany?

My main effort still is learning to understand how those societies work – the German as much as the Catalan and the Spanish. Different languages, different cultures, different histories – and different souls, mentalities, rhythms... But even though I grew up in South America (Brazil and partly Bolivia), I already knew something about Europe, although it is an entirely different thing to live and study ten years in Munich than coming every two years to visit your grandparents in a tiny German village. I still do feel like a stranger – or a half-stranger – in Munich as much as in Barcelona. I am a multi-migrant, and I’ll never be able to be of one place only. I believe that my stories will always have a touch of ‘something or somewhere else’, no matter where the setting is. Which is fine, isn’t it? It’s my only chance: I must embrace the plurality of my biography and cultural background. This is my path to find a truly authorial voice... and I’m working on it.