“I want my books to smell of bread”

The table that Luis Sepúlveda writes on is the one his friend Hans, from Hamburg, gave him when he had to close his bakery; it was the very table he used to work on. The writer took it home as it was, covered with flour, still smelling of the bread and the hard work, because, “I want my books to smell of bread.”

This is what the author himself said, at the Teatro Sociale, in Luino, when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Premio Chiara (Chiara Prize), during the afternoon presented by Laura Balduzzi. It was one of the many stories about his life, and Sepúlveda remembered it, together with the audience, who gave him an ovation. It is a pleasure to listen to him, and his Spanish accent transmits the alégria that his books are full of.

Sepúlveda has lived his life intensely, in a country like Chile, which saw dictatorship and the resistance to Pinochet. In prison, he was tortured; he lived in close contact with the indigenous people of Amazonia; he cooperated with Greenpeace to defend whales. He has a lot of stories to tell, and one afternoon is not enough. During the interview with Luca Crovi, he spoke of when he was sent to the principal’s office for writing a “spicy” story about his female teacher, and of when he hid in the National Library for a whole weekend, so that he could immerse himself in reading.

This man, who transmits serenity, has the charisma of a great artist, and you understand that he does not limit himself to the surface but always gets to the bottom of things; when a nephew of his asked him why the snail moved so slowly, he was not satisfied with a fast answer, but he meditated and wrote a book about it (together with Carlo Petrini of Slow Food), which became a eulogy to slowness and time. “I strongly believe in the power of dreams. We humans have the chance to dream and to create a better life. I’d like to infect the majority of people with dreams,” he admitted. The scrolling photos show his friendship with Vittorio Gassman, the meeting with Andrea Camilleri, his family and the passions of his life.

The book that changed his life was “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, and he affectionately remembers “his friend Gabriel García Márquez, a very shy, very generous man.”

He remembers that he started reading thanks to “Gloria, a beautiful 13-year-old girl. She’d invited me to her party and I didn’t know what to give her. I decided to give her my biggest treasure, a photo of my favourite football team signed by all of the players. She didn’t like it and told me she wasn’t interested in football, but she loved poetry. From then on, I started to read poems and to play less football. I have one doubt and one certainty in my life. My doubt is I don’t know if literature has gained anything from my books, but my certainty is that Chilean football lost a great champion.”