Laura Restrepo won the absolute freedom of storytelling. After a long life as a journalist and political activist, her dedication to literature led her to an audacity that at first glance seems excessive, but which, when you think about it, is the result of someone who knows that she is the owner of her language and her imagination. We just heard her in Guayaquil, and her very clear and passionate speech further illuminates the encounter with the pages of her latest novel.

Call in secret

IN Song of ex-lovers (Alfaguara, 2022) manipulates legend and reality at will. First, he relies on the Song of Songs and all the information he found about the loves of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; For the second, he collected his own tour through the countries of Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia, together with Doctors Without Borders. The result is a complex and multifaceted fabric that gives voice to a scholar with a strange name, who moves to the East in search of data that will establish in his thesis his early affection for the traveling queen.

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The story is divided between the distant mythical past – where there are superstitions, adventures, female power and great displacements – and the painful present, where wars destroy the lives of ordinary beings, and a generous organization of doctors comes to heal and protect the weakest. The visitor stands there; There is a Somali midwife who embodies overcoming violence and a tireless commitment to others. Looking across the desert, the couple understands the women who flee, those who give birth as a result of rape, the children who go blind.

Today, only ruins remain of the old places; the population flees in boats defying death…

Sometimes the style is troubling. Its modernity is astonishing, delving into names, allusions and landscapes of sand and incense. The narrator Bos Mutas imagines within the imagined and becomes the assistant of St. Thomas Aquinas to engage in an intense discussion with his teacher about the brilliance with which some stained glass windows project a female figure that can distract devotees (men, of course). his prayers. This, plus chapters devoted to Gerard de Nerval, the French romantic poet, and Arthur Rimbaud, the brilliant pioneer of the poetic avant-garde, are three hidden gems that explore the journeys of the spirit behind the symbolism drawn by the profile of a woman. Did they also pursue their queens of Sheba?

When the novel ends with biblical verses attributed to Solomon, it reaches a striking lyrical power and creates very beautiful lines that combine images of deer, fountains and wine, a direct legacy of the Song of Songs with this renewed narrative poem influenced by , the author. And since the novel suggests that myths are renewed every time they are consumed, the legend of the queen who won the heart of the Hebrew king with her wisdom and carried the seed in her womb to found another line of the Semitic race is connected to the cores of Asiatic-African life.

A wonderful read to get out of the ordinary life into reality. Today, only ruins remain of the old places; the population flees daily in boats defying death; The camps springing up in the deserts have been stabilized, but every Yemeni or Ethiopian woman still claims to be a descendant of the Queen of Sheba. (OR)