This week I am so pleased to be able to welcome onto the blog the internationally published Portuguese author, João Cerqueira. João is author of 9 books and has been published in 8 countries. His latest novel, “Perestroika”, is a political/historical novel that was originally published in Portuguese in 2023 and was published in English in January 2024. Although it is a fictional novel, set in a fictional country, it is based on insights and incidents that occurred in the communist era of Eastern Europe during the 1970s/1980s. Here’s a quick book summary:
BOOK SUMMARY
The story opens in 1978 and introduces the citizens of Slavia (a fictitious Eastern European country). Among them is Ludwig Kirchner, an artist who is struggling to survive in concentration camps whilst the terrifying elites of the regime live in luxury and moral depravity.
However, for the citizens of Slavia, everything changes in the late-1980s, with the advent of Perestroika. In the revolutionary turmoil that follows, former crime boss Ivan Fiorov leads the newly formed “Freedom Party”, heralding a wave of insecurity and oppression that resembles the previous dictatorship.
INTERVIEW
Welcome to the blog, João…. please, introduce yourself 😊
Hello. I am João. I was born and live in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. I completed a PhD in Art History at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. I teach at the Escola Superior de Educação de Viana. I have written nine books, published in eight countries and I have won five literary prizes in the United States and one prize in Italy.
My childhood was spent in the countryside and on the beach, so I have always had a very close relationship with nature. Despite shooting birds and killing mice as a child, today I am a defender of nature and its creatures. I live on a farm where I grows fruit trees and vegetables with my wife and our daughter. I can’t have dinner without drinking wine, and I love champagne.
Who or what inspired you to write “Perestroika”?
The novel “Perestroika” results from the profound impact of the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and people demanding freedom in the streets of communist countries. In addition to bringing freedom to half of the Europeans, Gorbachev’s Perestroika ended the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war. However, oddly enough, the topic was forgotten. To my knowledge, there is no film, TV series, or novel—except mine—that addresses one of the most important changes of the 20th century.
Furthermore, I visited Cuba three times and saw with my own eyes how a communist country works: there is no freedom of expression, there are no free elections, there are no human rights, and anyone who protests is arrested.
Additionally, some characters in the book are taken from European history:
The painter Ludwig Kirchner, Lia Kirchner’s father, was inspired by the German expressionist painter of the same name, whose works Hitler considered Degenerate Art.
The People’s Commissar for Culture, Zut Zdanov, was inspired by the Stalinist leader Andrei Zhdanov, responsible for culture in the USSR, who defended socialist realism in art and banned modernism.
President Alfred Ionescu was inspired by the playwright Eugène Ionesco, creator of the theatre of the absurd – which brings us back to the absurdity of communist regimes.
I really enjoyed reading your book, “Perestroika” and I particularly enjoyed how you portrayed the characters of Lia Kirchner, Helena Yava, Silvia Lenka & Ivan Fiorov. What character did you particularly enjoy writing about? What character was the hardest to portray?
I tried to ensure that no character was one-dimensional: good or bad. They are people of flesh and blood with qualities and defects who are forced to change their behavior due to Perestroika.
That said, my favourite characters are the Commissar for Education Helena Yava because she understands that she served a dictatorial regime and tries to redeem herself; and, of course, the main character, Lia Kirchner, the girl trained by the communist regime, who will become its main opponent.
Researching for your novel must have been quite interesting..… did you discover anything that shocked you or uncover some nugget of information that was unexpected?
I consulted a wide range of books, including the works of Anne Applebaum Gulag and Iron Curtain, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago, Victor Kravchenko’s I Choose Freedom, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, and others.
The horrors of communist regimes didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was that the party members, as they rose through the ranks, began to live more and more like capitalists. The communist leaders were authentic bourgeois.
The novel is based in fictional country of Slavia – although reading the novel I could visualise the images of the news reports on TV that I remembered seeing in the 1970s/1980s of Communist Eastern Europe. What were your reasons for picking a fictitious location for the novel?
Perestroika could have taken place in the Soviet Union, Poland or another communist country. But that would impose limitations on my creativity. In order to be able to write the story I had in my head, it was necessary to create an imaginary country: Slavia.
Growing up, did you envisage yourself as a writer or did you have other career aspirations?
My love of books was instilled by my father, who bequeathed me a library with over a thousand books. I looked at those books and dreamed of doing something similar. I thought those writers were the most important people in the world. I wanted to be like them.
In this library I discovered the classics of world literature. Among the reference books, I discovered, as a spiritual guide and instruction manual for the winding road of life, Erasmus of Rotterdam’s “In praise of Folly.”This is why humor is so important in my writing.
Is “Perestroika” available to purchase worldwide?
Yes, Perestroika is on Amazon and in the main online bookstores.
If you could visit any place in the world to inspire your next novel, where would you go and why?
When I travel around the world, I always discover something that ends up in my books. More than the places, it’s the people who inspire me. On a tropical island or at the North Pole, human beings can show solidarity or fight each other.
Are you a bookworm yourself? If so, what genres (or authors) do you usually like to read? And are you a kindle or “proper book” fan?
I only read paper books. My favorite writers are Marcel Proust, Pär Largerkvist, Mikhail Bulgakov, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Phillip Roth, Paul Auster, W. G. Sebald, Italo Calvino, Henrique Vila-Matas,, José Saramago and Lobo Antunes.
Personal now – what outfits and shoes would you normally be found wearing?
I try to keep up with fashion and dress well. I like to combine classic and modern styles. As for shoes, I like Timberland and Fred Perry trainers.
Do you have any favourite shops or online sites?
Those that are on sale, with low prices.
What’s next on your clothes/shoe wish list?
I need to buy a brown blazer for spring and light blue shirts.
Links you would like to share e.g. website/facebook etc
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perestroika-Eye-Tooth/dp/1926716779/ref=monarch_sidesheet
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202719173-perestroika
Author page: www.joaocerqueira.com
Thanks so much for chatting with me today João – “Perestroika” brought back memories of TV news and my travels in the 1980s! I loved the book, so thank you very much for my review copy.
Linda x
All photographs have been published with kind permission of João Cerqueira.
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