ISLAMABAD: A thought-provoking conversation with Spanish author Javier Moro, accompanied by appetising delicacies from the country, offered insight into the art of writing fiction.

The author ofFive Past Midnight in BhopalandThe Red Sari – a biography of Sonia Gandhi– was guest speaker at a programme organised by the Embassy of Spain in conjunction with the Asian Study Group titled, ‘On Writing Narrative Fiction’.

Several of his books are set in the subcontinent includingPassion India. Moro is the nephew of Dominique LaPeirre, co-author ofFreedom at Midnight, who initiated him into the craft of narrative nonfiction.

Moro told his listeners, a select group of diplomats and local guests that he wrote real stories and did not like fantasy, sci-fi, and black novels. He fell in love with existing stories to pass on that passion to the reader. He said he used fiction to give life to dead pages of history and transmit emotions. He chose writing over becoming a producer and working in movies.

“I spend three to four years researching subjects, after being convinced that their stories need to be told,” he said adding, “Sonia Gandhi is a fabulous story, an Italian house wife with absolutely no ambition at all, who hated to talk in public, was extremely shy, detested social life yet ended up being the most powerful woman in India. What a story. I had to write it though I had all the problems in the world because she did not want anyone to write her story.”

The author said he focused on the intimate details – the smell of the house, who they invited for dinner, who cooked, where did they buy the food – the atmosphere in the house and so on as according to him, these details brought life to text.

At the same time, he said he faced extreme difficulty writing because her kin would not talk to him, and he was also threatened with legal action. The book drew significant criticism for months, protests, his effigy burnt, his posters splashed with blood, while it was successfully released in other countries. “Later, the book became a huge hit,” Moro said.

Elaborating on problems writing about his characters, Moro said it was rare that the opinion one had of him or herself coincided with the writer’s and that led to problems.

He read out passages fromPassion Indiaabout Anita Delgado, a beautiful, but barely literate, Spanish teenager, who while dancing in a Madrid nightclub, caught the eye of a visiting Indian Maharaja Jagatjit Singh.

Moro fell in love with the city of Bhopal, while writingFive Past Midnight in Bhopal. “I had the most wonderful writing and research experiences. Bhopal will always be in my heart, stained by a terrible accident, a city of poets,” he said.

He said he always wanted to write about Benazir Bhutto, who was an image of Pakistan in the West. “She was such a big character. I was intrigued by her story. There isn’t an intimate book on her. But it was complicated and then she was assassinated. So I decided to write about Sonia Gandhi. But I would have loved that experience,” the author said.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2023