Cristina Sánchez Andrade on the Secretos a voces podcast: “Humor gives the reader a break”
The first episode of the Secretos a Voces podcast (in Spanish) is a conversation with Cristina Sánchez Andrade about her novel Habitada (Inhabited, Anagrama) and its connection with the contemporary classic The Notebook by Agota Kristof (published in Spanish by Libros del Asteroide as El gran cuaderno). The conversation, hosted by Lea del Pozo, covers themes such as madness, trauma, motherhood, and magical realism, with special attention to writing as a vital need. The author shares how her creative process and the influence of other books shape her literary universe, where humor is an essential element for easing the harshness of her stories.
“Humor gives the reader a break”
About the author
Cristina Sánchez Andrade (A Coruña, 1968) is a Spanish writer known for her fiction and for major literary awards that have secured her place in contemporary literature.
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (2004) for Ya no pisa la tierra tu rey (Your King No Longer Walks the Earth).
- Finalist for the Herralde Novel Prize (2014) for Las Inviernas (published in English as The Winterlings, Anagrama).
- Setenil Prize for the best short story collection published in Spain (2020) for El niño que comía lana (The Boy Who Ate Wool).
The importance of humor in literature
During the conversation, Sánchez Andrade highlights how humor becomes a tool for tackling the hardest subjects, giving readers a much-needed emotional breather. The author argues that literature should raise questions rather than provide answers, and that irony is a way to broaden our view of reality.
About the classic
The Notebook, a lesson in narrative economy
The first part of the trilogy, The Notebook (1986), tells the story of twin brothers Claus and Lucas, who are left in the care of their grandmother, a cruel and miserly old woman, during the Second World War in Hungary. The boys are forced to develop their own moral code and complete self-control in order to survive.
Agota Kristof was born in 1935 in Csikvánd, Hungary, a country she left for political reasons in 1956 to settle in Switzerland. After five years working in a watch factory, Kristof decided to learn French, the language in which she wrote her first novel in 1986: The Notebook. It is the first book in the trilogy featuring the brothers Claus and Lucas—reissued in Spanish by Libros del Asteroide in 2019. The novel earned her major awards such as the Alberto Moravia Prize in Italy, the Gottfried Keller and Friedrich Schiller Prizes in Switzerland, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. The Notebook is considered a contemporary classic and an essential read.
Listen to or watch the full conversation
Dive into Cristina Sánchez Andrade’s creative process and discover how literature can tackle the darkest subjects with a spark of humor. You can also watch the interview videos in the playlist on tekman’s YouTube channel (in Spanish).
Listen to the episode on Spotify.
Watch the episode on YouTube
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If you love literature and enjoy discovering writers’ motivations and thoughts, Secretos a Voces is for you. A new podcast episode every two weeks!
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