Agustín Fernández Mallo: "Reality is already fantastic enough in itself."

Writing a book about mourning was not the goal of Spanish writer Agustín Fernández Mallo. when he decided to tell the life of his deceased father in Mother of an Atomic Heart (2024), the story of an experienced and "optimistic" veterinarian who never "got hung up on fantasies that lead nowhere."

" I tried to pay homage to the lessons he taught me, unintentionally and without me even realizing it. Reality is already fantastic enough in itself without having to add fantasy to it," Fernández Mallo explains in an interview in Mexico.

During Fernández Mallo's childhood, his father never told him a children's story or took him to see Walt Disney movies, products that seemed "abhorrent" to his father, who simply "told him the truth."

This idea of not falling into fable and daydreaming has accompanied the poet in many of his novels – from Proyecto Nocilla (2013) to Madre de corazón atómico – with which he is able to connect everyday objects, such as a churros ticket, to the figure of his father.

The poetic touch of this author is no coincidence , because for him that is where one finds "the 'B' side of reality", a mental space that he shares with science, that discipline to which he dedicated the first years of his life and with which –in the form of an essay– the questions of what the world is like are answered.

"There's no need to create witches or flying elephants. You can create truly constructive fantasy through reality itself , because an apple falls, but the moon doesn't. (Isaac) Newton asked those questions, and they changed the history of humanity," he maintains.

Spanish literature often touches the limits of technique and even reimagines certain historical scenarios, as it did in the War Trilogy (2018).

Although this time, he clarifies, "he didn't want to be clever" about his father's death, nor get caught up in the documentary.

"Experiencing the life of a loved one adds another difficulty. It took me 12 years to say the book was finished because I had a hard time figuring out how to narrate it, the tone... I wanted absolute balance," he says.

Despite having sought a certain stability with this novel, Fernández Mallo did not want to "please or displease anyone"; he only aspired to "wield his poetics."

However, he understands that for many this may be a first introduction to his work because it touches on "universal themes."

" It's the most important book I've written on a personal level (...) It's told in a different way and without so much purely literary pyrotechnics, from a very accessible point of view, although it condenses a large part of my narratives and my poetics," he confesses.

Regarding his greatest literary influences, the writer reveals his fondness for Latin American literature, highlighting the narrative work of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges , from whom he learned that all good magical realism must return to reality.

“ Today, Latin American literature is a literature that is once again very powerful (...) For example, Mexican literature is very unusual and different; it blends many cultures in a way that is unique to the rest of Latin America,” he concludes.