Fernando Benzo fulfilled his dream of publishing at the age of 23. Since then, for this writer from Madrid, it has been a non-stop journey. A few weeks ago, his eleventh novel, The Black Dragon, was published, a story that takes not only its characters to the limit but also anyone who finds themselves in front of its pages. As he himself has confessed in this interview, he wants readers to doubt themselves, their values, and those boundaries between good and evil that seem unchanging to us all, but which, between the lines of this novel, could change completely.
First of all, congratulations on the publication of the novel. I would like to start by asking you about the beginning of it all. When did you discover your love for writing? I would really like to know, because I can’t pinpoint it. I always remember writing. When I was 10 or 12 years old, I wrote some stories about cowboy adventures. At that time, many Western movies were being shown, so I thought to write something like that. I believe I have always had the impulse to write and tell stories within me. I moved from those cowboy stories to other types of short stories, and then I started writing novels. It was a progressive evolution. But I am unable to identify the moment because every memory I have of myself includes writing.
At what moment did you start writing thrillers? Before, I wrote novels that did not belong to a specific genre, until I began writing novels with a suspenseful or detective component because I realized that those kinds of stories allowed me to tell many other things. Within this genre, everything fits. You can tell a suspense story, a crime story, and in the same novel talk about romantic relationships, family relationships, social critique, or political corruption. It is a very rich genre in that sense; it allows you to have many sub-genres within novels.
I think it is important to create characters that do not have a single nuance. In real life, none of us is black or white; we are all a sum of grays, and that is shown in Estela. She will be forced to make some decisions contrary to her way of thinking, to decide where for her that line is between good and evil, between what is just or not. In The Black Dragon, you have addressed very current issues, such as racism or corruption. What does it mean to write about things that are at the forefront of discussion? The truth is, it was complex, especially at times when the characters entered into certain racist conflicts. You have to create characters that think things that are very uncomfortable to you and that you do not believe. One cannot confuse the narrator’s voice with the characters’ voice. You must be able to differentiate between them. I do not intend to write a racist novel; what I intend to do is write a novel where there are characters that are racist. That forces you to mark a difference, to create distance, to make it clear that this trait is part of a character’s personality, and that demands a certain literary effort. One cannot generalize; just because there is a character who is racist, the novel does not carry a racist message; or because there is a villain who is Chinese, as is the case in The Black Dragon, does not mean that Chinese people are bad. As a reader, one must always avoid the temptation of generalization. These themes are explored in different narrative threads. Have you encountered any difficulties in writing a novel that involves so many characters with such different stories? It requires work to structure the plot and the relationships between characters so that everything fits. There is one thing that I do not like at all, which really bothers me, and that is stories that leave loose ends. I find that deceiving the reader. I cannot lay out a story, open ten plots that keep the reader engaged, and then, suddenly, reach the end, resolve two or three of them, and leave the rest hanging, letting them manage with their imagination to see how they end. You can provide a literary or poetically open ending, but what you cannot do is the trick of raising uncertainties and not resolving them. I find that to be fraud. I put a lot of effort into ensuring that my stories are well-rounded and coherent.
With regard to her protagonist, Estela is a very complex character, with many shades of gray, not just in her role as a police officer but also as a mother. I increasingly enjoy creating female protagonists, but it remains a challenge. Achieving the creation of a solid female character, logical and well-constructed, is a much more fascinating challenge than creating a character that could resemble me as a person. Moreover, I believe that Estela is a character that offers a lot of potential. She has gone through certain mental problems as a result of a previous case that she investigates in the novel, in which she had to kill someone. She is a woman who is tormented by the social demand to be a good mother above all else. In her case, that pressure is even greater because she is a single mother, which leads her to question whether she is a bad mother for focusing on finding some murderers instead of caring for her daughter. And as a police officer, she has to face an enormously complex case, one that seems too big for her. The combination of all this made me think that it created a very interesting character, especially because I believe it is important to create characters that do not have a single nuance. In real life, none of us is black or white; we are all a sum of grays, and that is shown in Estela. It even becomes a problem for her to be an extremely rigid and legalistic woman. In the end, if she wants to catch the bad guy, she will be forced to make some decisions contrary to her way of thinking, to decide where that line is for her between good and evil, between what is just and what is not. The book also poses the existence of good and evil, but what do you think about that? Has writing this novel changed the way you see things? I believe that if you and I were asked about various issues: is this good or bad? We would not agree on everything, and if another person were brought in and asked the same questions, they would not be the same as you or me, and if a third is brought in, they would also differ from the three of us. I believe that the exact line of where what is just, good, bad, what can be done, what cannot be done, what is ethical, and what is not ethical varies greatly depending on each person. Estela is an enormously strict character, but the problem arises when she encounters a conflict between upholding the law and doing justice. At a certain moment, that leads her to question whether it is justified to sacrifice a part of legality because that is precisely what will lead her to achieve justice. Does the end justify the means? I have mine, which is probably also exclusive and where I can be wrong about many things. It’s not that the novel changed me. What I want to demonstrate with the novel is that each of us marks a line, and I want that when the reader finishes reading the novel, not only has a great time reading it, which is the primary objective, but that it also leaves them with some pre…
