When the finalist for the Planeta award was announced last night during a literary dinner at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), there were many murmurs that arose in the oval room and several questions that provoked them. The main one: Who is that 23-year-old young man who has stood out among all the titles presented, only behind the winner, Sonsoles Ónega?
His name is Alfonso Goizueta (Madrid, 1999) and he has a degree in History and International Relations from King's College London. Until last night he was practically unknown in the literary world, although at the age of seventeen he published his first book, Limiting Power 1871-1939, an essay in which he analyzes the changes in international relations between those years. He wasn't the only one. He is also the author of The Last Rulers of Castile (2019) – about the figures of Isabel la Católica, Cardinal Cisneros and Isabel de Portugal; The Greenhouses of Sal Gema (2016), a story of fantasy and magic during the Second World War; and Heart of Deities (2020), adventures starring the Greek gods. Despite this, he considers that it is this new book that has proclaimed him a finalist, The Blood of the Father, focused on the figure of Alexander the Great, is "his first real novel" and he hopes that readers "judge it by its content and not because of the age at which I wrote it".
How are you getting out of anonymity?
It is a new experience that I did not expect but for which I believe I am prepared. Although I admit that it is strange. It's only been a few hours and they've already called me Ayuso's boy.
Are you worried about what they say?
Not at all. It is a new phase of life that I contemplate with curiosity and caution. I am not affiliated with any political party and what I have posted on the networks a long time ago, whether political or not, does not have to identify me now. Anyway, I like this new challenge. I think that leaving anonymity brings much more beauty than bad things.
Like Alejandro, you also begin an initiatory journey
The truth is that if. Although I started publishing when I was seventeen, I consider this to be my first important novel and that is how I approach it. That does not mean that I detract from my previous works, since they are what have brought me here and have made me improve.
It hasn't been reaching out and kissing the saint
Not at all. I always say that my best ally is the trash can. I've gotten tired of crossing out paragraphs and throwing entire pages in the trash until something comes out that I consider worthy.
All this with a pandemic in the middle
Indeed. I started writing in confinement, in April 2020, and I have been like that until 2023. It was not the best time to concentrate, but I had a lot of ideas running through my head. I wanted to write a story about Alejandro.
But he ended up writing a novel
My grandfather told me that, even if I tried, it would be impossible to write about Alexander the Great in a small dose. It didn't take me long to see that he was right.
Did you find anything during the documentation that hasn't already been said about Alejandro?
It is true that a lot has been written about Alejandro. It's not that I have discovered something that was not known, but I think that, compared to other works, I bring a different perspective.
Which?
More human. Many historians only focus on her ambition. In that she wanted to conquer more and more, even though the soldiers asked her to return. This raised a question for me. I wasn't so much interested in the conquests but rather why I didn't want to return. I denied that it was a matter of greed.
Did you find an answer?
More than an answer, it encouraged me to think more psychologically about the character. I began to think that this could be an internal conflict forged during his teenage years. When writing, I was very motivated to raise these questions.
Now that you know him in all his facets, you will know how to respond to those who debate whether he was a hero or a villain.
For me a hero, but not in the sense of being a pristine person surrounded by virtues. He was someone with his flaws, his demons and his acts of tyranny too.
Some historians call him genocidal
He was not a democrat. He passed knives to those who did not suit him and massacred entire armies in his ambition and this is also represented in my novel. But we must understand that his reality cannot be analyzed with the eyes of the 21st century. Presenteeism is never a good ally. This does not mean that it justifies what he did, but you have to understand the context. Was he a genocide? Yes, and what warrior was not one in the 4th century BC? But I've never bought the idea of him being a megalomaniacal psychopath who just wanted to kill and conquer. I assume that there was a thinking soul beneath that shell. Let us not forget that he was educated by Aristotle.
He knew how to use his ideas and reflections at a propaganda level
He achieved milestones that no other politician of his time had achieved, such as being crowned pharaoh of Egypt. He manages to build a series of myths around him so that they accept him as a descendant of the pharaohs and Egyptian gods. It is no coincidence that whenever his figure was represented on coins they placed horns on it. He did it to pretend to be the son of Zeus, he had everything calculated to the millimeter.
And that thinking soul also left a place for love
Yes, she had a very beautiful love story with Hephaestion that I present as the central axis of the novel. It was common in Greece to have sexual relations between teacher and disciple or between boys who lived together, as is the case. But they were more than lovers. The problem was that Alexander, as king, had to marry and leave a son to inherit Macedonia. I was very interested in addressing this conflict literary. I hope I have succeeded, the readers will tell you.
