TURKEY

"I´m Interested In the Unimportant, the Seemingly Worthless"

“At the university, we went to towns and unions to create bulletins and popular radio stations. Another world opened up to me, very different from the one at home and from the university. And I learned to listen and my curiosity for everything that was different from me increased. I also learned to have a critical point of view” Cynthia Rimsky
Neşe BİNARK
"I´m Interested In the Unimportant, the Seemingly Worthless"
Photo contribute: María Aramburú

My passion for writing; pleasure, adventure, mystery, journey

The first novel of Chilean writer Cynthia Rimsky, who lives in Buenos Aires, Poste Restante, published in 2001, was translated into Turkish as Postrestant and published in our country in October 2024. I conducted an online Spanish interview with Cynthia Rimsky. The author of the novel Postrestant, which means keeping the letter or shipment at the post office until it arrives and is delivered to passengers who do not have a specific address and travel from one place to another, about her novel Postrestant, which consists of notes, writings, photographs, letters and city maps she kept during her travels. Enjoyable readings.

What kind of experiences did being a journalist and writer born in Chile in the 60s bring you?

I started studying Journalism in the 80s under the Pinochet dictatorship with the media censored, repression of journalists and a lot of fear of saying what was really happening. At the university we went to towns and unions to create bulletins and popular radio stations. Another world opened up to me, very different from the one at home and from the university. And I learned to listen and my curiosity for everything that was different from me increased. I also learned to have a critical point of view.

Photo contribute: María Aramburú

What does reading and writing mean to you?

It is my passion, my enjoyment, an adventure, a mystery, a journey

What kind of writing language do you think you established with the minimalist language and "changing narrator" method you preferred in your next novel? What is your purpose in doing this?

I have no purpose. It's the way I've been finding to write. I am interested in the insignificant, that which apparently has no value. I am interested in working with those materials discarded by culture or power, and looking for universal problems or tensions in them. I love objects, jobs, secondary characters, observing, listening to what cannot be seen with the naked eye, what is behind or to the side. Regarding the narrators, I build distanced narrators so that they can critically observe their surroundings, narrators who don't know, who don't understand what they see, curious, surprised, humble narrators. From that I have been building a poetics of the minor.

How did the idea of writing your novel Postrestant come about when you went on a trip? As a travel writer, what is the importance of your trip to Türkiye in your novel?

At first, I wanted to be a travel correspondent but the magazines to which I sent my chronicles found them too literary, so instead of correcting them, I continued writing them for myself. During the trip I never thought about writing a book. It was upon my return when I took out of the backpack what I had brought, when I opened my notebooks only then did I think that I could perhaps construct a narrative about that trip.

The trip to Türkiye was important for several reasons. It was a totally different country from those I had visited, in terms of culture, architecture, and geography. On the other hand, in Cappadocia I met the Slovenian architect who told me the truth about the photo album that I had with me from Chile and that was what prompted me to make that trip.

Photo contribute: María Aramburú

What are your works after your novel Postrestant? Will your other works be translated into Turkish? Do you have a new project you want to do?

After Poste Restante I published 10 more books. The Epona publishing house will publish my latest novel, Clara y Confusa, which won the Herralde prize this year.

List of all books by Cynthia Rimsky:

Poste restante (2001)

Los perplejos (2009)

Ramal (2011)

Nicaragua [al cubo] (2014)

El futuro es un lugar extraño (2016)

Fui (2016)

En Obra (2018)

La revolución a dedo (2020)

Il futuro è un posto strano (2021)

Yomurí (2022)

Autostop per la rivoluzione (2022)

Clara y confusa (2024)

Photo contribute: María Aramburú

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