Gonzalo Giner (Madrid, 1962) takes the first step and crosses the fence that separates him from a waterfall. The animals look at him, waiting to see if he brings food or if he just comes to take pictures, like so many others. They sense his good intentions and move towards him, cautiously, until they stop on a piece of ground where a placenta is lying. The night before, a foal was born and it’s not hard to guess who the mother is, by the bloody hind legs.
The writer appreciates the gesture and reciprocates with caresses. He does not want to scare them, his respect is maximum. That’s why, before becoming a writer, he became a veterinarian. “I couldn’t leave out either facet, but if I had to choose, I’d choose to be close to the animals. My connection with them is stronger than with the letters, which is saying a lot”, he admits to La Vanguardia from the Eguassada de la Cartuja, in Jerez de la Frontera, where he has traveled to present his latest novel. la, La sombra de los sueños, the first after winning the Fernando Lara award with La bruma verde (2020), which has brought him so much joy.
It is no accident that I chose this place. In its pages, as in previous novels, such as El sanador de caballos (2008) or El jinete del silencio (2011), these animals are very present. “I actually work with ruminants. Cows, calves, sheep… and I often think about writing about them, but I’ve never quite found the glamor in them.”
Marengo, Incitatus, Bucéfalo, Palomo… They are all horses that at some point in history came to share fame with the leaders of their time: Napoleon, Caligula, Alexander the Great and Simón Bolívar, respectively. The author from Madrid rescues them in his plot, together with a historical figure who, he admits, “has always caught my attention”: Saladin, great sultan of Egypt and conqueror of cities such as Cairo and Damascus.
“We have always been told that he was the villain of the story. After all, we live in a western civilization and send our men to fight against their army. It’s normal for us to see him like this. This time I wanted to put myself on the other side, which allowed me to discover what a great leader he was. He achieved for the first time the unification of Islam in what would be called the holy war against the Christians”, explains the author, who points out the admiration for being “respected both by his own and by his enemies, since he was a example of chivalry”.
“He even sent doctors to Ricard Cor de Lleó, one of his rivals, when he learned that he had been wounded in battle, and he also gave him a horse when he learned that he had lost his in battle.”
In its pages, Giner does not only travel to the time of Saladin. It jumps to the Second World War and subsequent years, as well as to the contemporary era. A combination that allows the reader to contextualize each and every one of the characters that make up this choral novel, among which a zooarchaeologist stands out, who is asked to find the bones of the historical horses mentioned; a white glove thief; an illusionist; a scientist specialized in genetic editing, and an eminent veterinarian, “a figure who almost always appears in my books and who I like to claim”.
Also one of the richest emirs in the world. “It was necessary for one of the protagonists to have a lot of money, since only then could he put the rest against the ropes so that ethics and limits are reconsidered, two themes very present in the novel. He is a character who is obsessed with Saladin and preserving a gene bank with the most famous historical horse breeds in the world, so he will be accompanied by a large team of scientists”.
Cloning “we recently saw with Miley’s dogs”, copies of Conan, the dog who lived with the Argentine president until 2017. “I don’t think it’s bad at all. It is another reproduction technique that is also carried out with horses. Of course, as long as it is used with animals. The rest, that remains only for fiction”, he adds.
