The year 2020 marked the release of my third book: The Mystery of the Seleka.
It is an adventure novel set in the same narrative universe as Le Ombre di Nahr, written shortly after completing Nahr itself.
The original idea was to create a single narrative thread spread across multiple books, following the adventures of Salvatore Pumo around the world in his role as a contractor.
In reality, I quickly realized that the operation was far from simple. The risk of repetitiveness – especially when sketching, over and over and over again in future books, the psychology of the same characters – felt creatively unappealing.
So I wrote Seleka with the intention of crafting a strong story while at the same time shaking up the world of Nahr.
If you read it, you will understand why.
This does not rule out the possibility of future spin-offs exploring the life of Salvatore Pumo.
Seleka was actually my second book in order of writing, but it was published after Fatima for reasons of “urgency”.
In Fatima, I had predicted certain contemporary events. Had those events happened while the manuscript was still in the drawer, it would have been rather grotesque.
So I took a gamble. One that I lost.
The prophecy of Fatima has not (yet) come true, so I now have a second–third book published before a third–second book.
Details of little importance.
Back to Seleka: I believe the book has a gripping story, intricate and filled with several twists, including a finale in which all cards are revealed and every piece falls into place.
A great deal of research went into the setting, thanks also to a friend of mine native to the Central African Republic. We spent many nights discussing his country, its customs, food, religion and daily life.
During those months, and even now as I write this, his country has been torn apart by the horrors of a civil war threatening to consume everything. On some nights we even had to interrupt our cultural-exchange sessions due to sudden lethal attacks on the neighborhoods where his loved ones lived.
Fortunately, the war never brought mourning into his family. But you can imagine how every Seleka militia attack, followed by retaliation from Anti-Balaka forces, meant anxiously searching for lists of the dead and wounded.
Returning (yet again) to the book – so many digressions… – in my urge to express my impatience with rules, in this case narrative rules, I slightly tore the tacit pact between narrator and reader, reshaping protagonists and antagonists as events unfolded.
I hope the reader won’t feel disoriented, but rather will find a satisfying interpretive key.
After all, writing is imagination and inventiveness.
So grant me a little creative freedom.
With that said… happy reading, and see you in the next adventure – narrative or real.
TORNA AGLI ARTICOLI
