Barcelona Metropolis

Few people in the world are as clear about things as the Frenchman Pierre Lemaitre (Paris, 1951). As if he were a Napoleon of literature or a resurrected Dumas, his imagination runs the gamut of the whole world, the major social, historical and political movements as well as the little headaches and passions of everyday people. If he were a politician, we would say he is a statesman. If he were a writer, we would call him the Balzac or the Dumas of the 21^st century.

His current literary venture (he does not work on a one-book basis, but rather on book series) is simply to “portray the 20^th century in its entirety”. “Age permitting, I want to create something that is not so much a fresco, a pretentious word, but a photograph of the 20^th century in the 1980s or 1990s,” he tells us. To tell entertaining stories that take place in those times”. He has come up with three trilogies: the first is Les Enfants du désastre [Children of Disaster], already completed, which narrates the two great world wars and their causes and consequences; the second (in the end, a tetralogy), which he has half finished, Les Années Glorieuses [The Glorious Years], covers the 1950s and 1960s; and the third, only in the works, Les Années Grises [The Grey Years], will deal with the 1970s and 1980s. Commenting on how this major undertaking came about, he explains: “It was purely mechanical, in Les Enfants du désastre I had written about the 1920s, 30s, 40s... and I thought to myself: ‘Now I’ll focus on the 50s! And then the 60s!’ Don’t you think it’s a stroke of genius? I’m brilliant... Les Années Glorieuses will end in 1965. And you know what I’ll do next? Another trilogy! One that will start in the early 1970s and end with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I have about another six years of work to do. When I finish, I’ll be 78 years old and I reckon I’ll be able to die by then, although I don’t rule out other possibilities.”

Over the years, we have met this literary giant, both on his visits to Barcelona and in his successive homes (he never stays still) in Courbevoie, Montmartre, Arles and the outskirts of Bordeaux (over time, he has moved away from Paris). At the time of the pandemic, we talked to him via Zoom, during which, forever with the characters from his novels swirling around in his head, he showed us, for example, the cardboard horse’s head one of his main characters slept with.

When Lemaitre is in Barcelona, he always tries to get to the beach and does not make it. His busy event schedule prevents him from setting aside a day’s leisure time, so all the places he has visited are related to literary activities in which he was taking part. This was the case with Montjuïc Castle, where he attended a talk and was impressed by the grounds and, above all, by the views of the city. Among his most vivid memories is his meeting in 2017 with John Banville – an author he has admired for years – at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), where he also spoke with Jean Echenoz. A few months ago, at a packed event with readers at the Jaume Fuster Library, he was surprised to see the number of people unable to get in, and he spent ages talking to those who had waited outside just to see him pass by.

His prose is adrenaline-fuelled and tragicomic. Humour, dramatic action and sheer tension shake the characters, who play their role and often act in an over-the-top fashion, exaggerating feelings and gestures. Plot dominates over psychological depth. Each chapter ends with the action hanging in the air, like when the authors of short stories didn’t know how the book would continue the following week. This is not the case with Lemaitre, a keen planner who spreads his plotlines all over the studio. “Many years ago, watching The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, I realised that today’s series worked with the same narrative framework as 19^th-century novels. I opted for the modern virtues of 19^th-century literature and I did quite well...”.

It all began with the crime series starring the dwarf Chief Inspector Camille Verhœven (from 2006 to 2012). Lemaitre, a former practising psychologist, was passionate about literature and taught French, literature, general knowledge and communication in the Parisian banlieues, in vocational schools for adults. He also taught at a school for librarians, where he had an affair with a pupil. “As I was a model teacher, I said to myself: ‘If you seduced one of your students, it is only right for you to marry her’.” So he did, and published his first book in 2006, at the age of 55, thanks to her insistence. “It’s not that I became a writer then,” he explains, “I had been one since I was 18, I’ve always written, although I didn’t publish. I admit that it was all thanks to Pascaline. She had the faith in me that I didn’t have back then. I sent my first two novels to twenty publishers, and they all turned me down. I would have given up, but she insisted: ‘They’re wrong, Pierre’. Finally, one publisher said they would publish my novel about the detective Camille Verhœven. The book came out and we got married.” Around the age of 60, he became a father for the first time.

He describes Verhœven as “someone marked by fate. He is extremely short, 1.45 metres tall, and in a perpetual state of anger; he is not pleasant, without being disagreeable, but at the same time he is seductive. Although it is not easy for a woman to date such a short man, he has an enormous charisma that makes up for it. His point of view is crucial: he always sees the world from below, and this visual perspective helps him to solve cases. The character has some of my father’s traits and my greatest flaw; I had to work hard not to get caught up in anger”.