“Once you step out of your environment, it’s difficult to look naively at it,” says the 34-year-old writer Ms Gabriela Babnik, who won the EU Prize for Literature 2013, which is presented to Europe's best emerging authors.
Ms Babnik recieved the award for her third novel “Sušna doba” (A Dry Season), which was published last year. Like her resounding debut novel “Koža iz bombaža” (Cotton Skin), this novel is also set in Africa, beyond the horizon of Burkina Faso and Mali, both permeated by mythology and magic. It battles the deeply-rooted racial stereotypes about Africa, created by the western society. (“I remember us being all naked, with big stomachs,” in the novel says the African protagonist Ismael, “There is nothing literary or special about us, nothing magical or realistic, this is how we looked like.”)
“Sušna doba” describes a love affair in which stereotypical roles are reversed: she is a 62-year-old designer, who escaped from Europe due to a tragic family story, and he is a 27-year-old African, who grew up on the streets. At first, in order to combat loneliness they have an erotic relationship. This merges into the background of harmattan, a dry season “during which neither nature nor love can flourish”. Although at first glance the book might seem like a story about insanity, loneliness and pleasures, Ms Babnik says that this is partially an autobiographical account of a woman “who needs not only a young male body, but also a space for her creation”.
The back cover of the novel “Koža iz bombaža” (2007) reads that you “live somewhere between Ljubljana and Ouagadougou”, the capital of Burkina Faso. Is this item of biographical data still accurate? Where do you go when you say you’re going “home”?
Though it was written that I live somewhere between Ljubljana and Ouagadougou, this was never true. I used to go to Burkina Faso more often than now, as now I’m a mother of two little girls. In a way, the town of Bobo Dioulasso really is my second home. I like Ljubljana in my own way, such as riding a bicycle, books I keep here, the Tivoli park, meeting acquaintances, as well as attending literary and cultural events. All this is deeply rooted in me. On the other hand, Bobo – as the locals name the town – means our small Bougainvillea-clad house, mango on the terrace, car mechanics who know me by my name, and the kittens the lives of which I saved. I think I’m lucky to feel good in both parts of the world.
Last month in Brussels, when you were awarded the EU Prize for Literature 2013 for one of Europe's best emerging authors, you said that you would like to have your novel “Sušna doba” translated in French so that your husband would also be able to read it. Does your partner have any role in your writing of novels?
First, my husband is extremely critical. Thus, in a way, I’m afraid of his reading my writing. Still, he knows how I write, as he has read a passage from “Koža iz bombaža” which was translated to French. To me, my husband is important for two reasons: first, because he supports me in what I’m doing (for instance, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in an interview that every writer must know that they are returning to a safe haven of their family, which I agree with), and second, because I can check with him the information about Africa.
Both “Koža iz bombaža” and “Sušna doba” examine the theme of a love affair between a European female and an African male (who is in “Sušna doba” half younger than the protagonist woman). Many can imagine such relationships in a way they were presented by Ulrich Seidl in the first part of his trilogy “Paradise”, “Love”. Are your descriptions of interracial relationships a conscious demolition of such and similar views of elderly European women, who are said to be travelling to Africa to be engaged in sex tourism?
The love affair in the novel “Koža iz bombaža” is of totally different nature than the one in the novel “Sušna doba”. “Koža iz bombaža” examines the possibility of preserving love on 20 square metres, while love theme of the third novel is not restricted to space. Moreover, it is set in a dessert, during the time of harmattan, which is during whirls of dust, chapped lips, and burning flamingos flying in the air. It was once written that nature reflects impossibility of an affair between an older woman (a European) and a younger lover (an African). At first, Ismael and Ana really coexist in their own interests, but as soon as their paths diverge, they start yearning for each other. More than commenting on the question about what elderly European women are doing in Africa, Sušna doba comments what humanitarian organisations as well as European politicians are doing in Africa. In reality, the novel can read as allegory. For instance, in Brussels, where I was awarded the EU Prize for Literature, I said that the novel is dedicated to all those “invisible” people who in Europe – or in Brussels, to be precise – clean our bathrooms, babysit our children and protect our superstores. All low-paid jobs in Belgium, France and in other European countries are done by “third-world people”. In my opinion, this says a lot about our overestimated and aloof attitude.