Alfaguara press pack for Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel 'La isla de la Mujer Dormida' (October 2024)

April 1937. While the Spanish Civil War rages, merchant seaman Miguel Jordán Kyriazis is sent by the fascist rebels to the Aegean Sea to clandestinely attack naval traffic from the Soviet Union transporting military aid to the Spanish Republic. At his base of operations, a small island in the Aegean Sea, the life of the Spanish privateer intersects in a murky triangle with that of the ship's owners, Baron Katelios and his wife, a seductive, mature woman seeking, with cold desperation, a way to escape her fate.

Set in the Greek Western Cyclades, 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman,' the new novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, is a harsh tale of sea, espionage, and war, but also the story of three people trying to overcome the wounds from their past. A tale that brings to light essential themes such as friendship, love, danger, loyalty, life, and death.

"But that's piracy..."

With a Spanish name and a Greek surname inherited from his mother, the life of Miguel Jordán Kyriazis, the protagonist of 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman,' changed on July 18, 1936. A merchant navy pilot with a wife and son, the military uprising against the Spanish Republic took him by surprise at the north-western port of El Ferrol and, unbeknownst to him, led him, based on his service merits, on a mission he would never have imagined. Elevated, by luck or fate, to second lieutenant in the nationalist Navy, his character made him a suitable man to carry out a risky mission for which there were few candidates and even fewer who would accept: commanding a base in the Aegean Sea with the objective of clandestinely tracking down and sinking ships from the Soviet Union transporting arms and food to the Spanish Republic.

Until then, the Mediterranean had been just another theater of operations in the conflict, but England and France were determined to contain the Spanish conflict within its own shores. This was a significant inconvenience for a nation divided into two factions with interests and allies beyond its borders. The League of Nations also sought to join this initiative, complicating matters and limiting the scope of action of the Spanish nationalists, determined to sabotage their adversary's logistics. This convinced the Francoist Navy of the advantages of covert warfare, and it turned to Miguel Jordán Kyriazis to make him a 20th-century privateer.

Through the figure of this sailor, destined to become a man of fortune, without a nation, but with the license to act as he sees fit according to his own criteria, Arturo Pérez-Reverte brings back the old pirate stories to the 21st century. He does so with an atypical hero, one who is neither disenchanted (like his 17th-century Captain Diego Alatriste) nor ironic, nor conforms to the duties that his uniform requires, nor operates along a dangerous frontier. This time, the writer has chosen a civilian, until now unaffected by war and its rules, who is honorable, even though he is destined to practice piracy; who is good, despite being betrayed by his feelings; who tries to do the right thing, but understands that it is not always possible. A man subject to the laws of adventure, which will bring to light his own contradictions and test his courage.

"It would be the first time since Homer that a foreigner comes to a Greek home and doesn't sit at the table."

Lena and Pantelis Katelios. She seeks an impossible happiness; he pursues a long-faded love. They are the other protagonists of 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman.' They are two sides of the same coin in a marriage in its twilight and two vertices of a triangular relationship with Miguel Jordán as its other point.

In the Mediterranean, everyone knows it's bad luck to change the name of a boat, but this woman has already changed hers three times. First, it was Helena Nikolaievna; then, Lena Mensikov, and finally, Lena Katelios. Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novels are full of women of character, like Eva (the NKVD spy in the series 'Falcó'); brave women, like Elena Arbués (in another war-time novel, 'El italiano'); idealists (the Mexican guerrilleras in 'Revolución'); or the scheming and dangerous Angélica de Alquézar in the 'Alatriste' saga. But none is quite like Lena Katelios, who presents herself to the reader as a locked treasure chest or as an enigma to be deciphered. She is a complex and tormented personality who tries to break the siege she has felt trapped in for years. At forty-nine years old, her short, elegant hair streaked with gray, she adorns one of her ankles with a fine gold chain that serves as a metaphor for all that is unknown within her. Standing next to Miguel Jordán, she evokes a trail of mistakes, a life dotted with gratifying memories, but also with stale love and bitter words.

Pantelis Katelios, seventy-two years old, owner of Gynaíka Island and a supporter of the Nationalist faction, is a man of distinction, with a clear inclination toward luxury. He has experienced the ravages of the Great War and now he fights the sense of alienation that the world provokes in him delving into the books in his library. He despises vulgarity, the thirst for revenge of the working classes, and the anger that surrounds the times, along with those new-fangled political projects that have emerged (communism, fascism), and the ancestral hatreds that drive men to kill each other for causes such as religion, race, or motherland. The two used to be the perfect couple, at least in appearance, because from the beginning theirs was revealed as an asymmetrical relationship. They are an example of the wear and tear that time takes on feelings and the price that is paid for pursuing desire to the bitter end.

"The two developed an unusual game of loyalties and tricks: a non-aggression pact and, only as far as possible, of mutual assistance."

Greece, Lebanon, and Turkey. In the best traditions of the spy genre, the action of this novel is spread across different places: Beirut, Athens, Syros, and Istanbul. 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman,' which takes place largely in Gynaíka, an isolated piece of land west of Andros and Tinos, is also the story of a subtle friendship between two spies and the interplay of loyalties and mistrust they share. One is a nationalist and the other a republican, and their names are, respectively, Pepe Ordovás and Salvador Loncar. Both are deployed in Istanbul by their superiors to monitor arms trafficking and anything elses happening in that area. The former is short, nervous, with curly hair, large ears, and the air of a fox. He feels comfortable with his contradictions and has no doubt that his side will triumph. The latter is an agent of the Republic with an accurate intuition, but with a hint of disenchantment in his smile when he observes how men are capable of ruining the highest ideals with their intransigence, pettiness, and fanaticism. Both Ordovás and Loncar share a passion for chess, and in their games they seem to develop the tactics they will need to apply in their professional missions. But, above all, they are united by the need of mutual exchanges of information, a delicate but necessary matter, on which their physical and political survival depends. Although that is never guaranteed.

Ordovás and Loncar don't allow the defense of their causes to blind their common sense, and they know what's coming in Spain, no matter who wins. They are realists and are not fooled by the resentments that dwell within and by the desire for revenge that fuel fratricidal wars. Through them, the reader delves into the international context, its alliances, and its diplomatic moves. Italy and Germany supported Franco's uprising, and the Soviet Union supported the Republic. But the author, through references to the Smyrna massacre and the Venizelos revolt of 1922, also addresses the history of Greece during the time of Ioannis Metaxas, a character who looms in the background of the story. He led a dictatorship in Greece between 1936 and 1941 (when the Germans invaded) and never concealed his sympathy for the rebels in Spain. That's why Miguel Jordán can act with impunity in his territorial waters without anyone bothering him.

"The early bird catches the worm."

Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who has addressed the Spanish Civil War on various occasions with equanimity and rigor ('Line of Fire,' 'The Civil War Told to Young People,' and 'The Italian') addresses in 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman' a topic that has been little discussed until now: what happened in the Spanish Navy at the beginning of the war. Through the conversations between the characters, well-known vessels such as the cruiser Canarias, and famous events such as the Battle of Cape Machichaco, are brought to light, as well as the sad events that took place on Spanish ships in 1936, at the very beginning of the war.

Miguel Jordán himself recalls how ideology turns men into wolves and discipline into chaos. But, above all, he is deeply aware of the devastating news that broke in those first days of war and the murders committed with impunity on both sides. As Pepe Ordovás, the nationalist spy, emphasizes, it was these events that decimated the Republic's operational capacity at sea and, as Anton Solionov, one of Stalin's USSR men in Istanbul, recalls, this is what caused their fleet, with all its might, to remain anchored in port. The author then turns to the character of Nicolás Molina, the government's deputy delegate to the Republican fleet, with anarcho-syndicalist roots and a personality marked by resentment and deep complexes. He is an individual with a bad reputation earned because of his responsibility in the massacres committed on the prison ships Río Sil and España No. 3, in Cartagena.

"It was a fast and efficient war machine."

"Lykaina." She-wolf. This is the name of a German torpedo boat. Specifically, the one Miguel Jordán Kyriazis uses in his daring forays at sea. A vessel, as Aegean tradition dictates, with an eye painted on its hull, slender, assembled in the Lürssen shipyards in Vegesack, capable of reaching speeds of thirty-six knots and equipped with two torpedo tubes, one on each side. If in his novel 'The Italian' Arturo Pérez-Reverte introduced readers to the submarine manned torpedos the Italians called "maiali" and showed what warfare was like under the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar during World War II, in 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman' he introduces us to a dangerous and lethal weapon made by the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy: the Schnellboot S-7.

Since he wrote 'La carta esférica' (published in English as 'The Nautical Chart'), a story about shipwreck hunters, the sea has been one of the great settings in the writer's novels, as well as one of his better known passions. In this novel, he demonstrates his knowledge of maritime customs and superstitions, his mastery of slang, and his seafaring expertise, mentioning within its pages a long catalog of ships of different nature. For Pérez-Reverte, the sea is a mirror, not only for telling adventure tales but also for portraying, from a convenient distance, the events that occur on land, while also serving to vindicate the legacy of Mediterranean civilizations throughout history, starting from those "thousand ships" recounted by Homer that led the Achaeans to the siege of Troy, a war honored in these pages too.

"Sinking ships is not a civilized act in the twentieth century."

To tell the story of 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman,' the author uses a series of characters with very different ideas and personalities, free from ideological ties, who, for a pittance, are happy to undertake a risky mission. They are not the noblest, nor the best, nor should one look for exemplary behavior in them. They handle their jobs with ease, know what they have to do, and answer only to themselves and their principles. None of them are dreamers, and almost all of them are familiar with the vagaries of luck and the rules that prevail in war conflicts. Through them, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who has always acknowledged his desire to write a novel about modern privateers, describes an adventure full of unexpected events and twists, and highlights the arms trafficking that gave rise to the Spanish Civil War.

Ioannis Eleonas

"He was a Greek sailor with curly hair flecked with gray, which also appeared on his chin only a few hours after shaving. He had the physical poise of a trustworthy man: tanned by the sun and the Etesian winds, medium height, rough hands, and a broad face, torso, and waist." Loba's pilot is a man of blunt words and eloquent gestures. Rational, prudent, yet brave and determined in action. Someone accustomed to the dangers of the sea and smuggling, and who knows that part of the Aegean like the back of his hand. He understands Miguel Jordán and his concerns, and, despite the distance imposed by rank, he will become one of his greatest supporters. In fact, through the two of them, the author writes a great story of friendship (another of the threads of this novel) between two men who, without using too many words, are capable of understanding each other and face the dangers unwaveringly.

Bobbie Beaumont

"As tall as Jordán, but skinny and with very long legs, out of proportion to his torso. Sunken cheeks, aquamarine eyes, moist behind the lenses of horn-rimmed glasses." He is English, elegant, with a singular and distinguished bearing. He served in the British Navy, aboard the Southampton, during World War I, and will now serve as Miguel Jordán's telegraph operator. He likes to quote literary works, speaks with depth, and carries the burden from three problems: alcoholism, a certain misanthropy, and memories of the 1914 war. Although none of these aspects hinder him when it comes to work and going to sea, he is an example of how previous experiences twist people's reactions and also of the consequences that wars have on individuals.

Jan Zinger

"Thirty-one years old, professional diver, former petty officer with experience in underwater weapons. Deserter, eleven months earlier, from the Dutch cruiser De Ruyter." He enjoys the impetuousness and vehemence of ill-tempered youth. Offensive and rude at times, he tends to respect rank on board, but neglects hierarchy and manners once ashore. His personality will cause a tense relationship with the crew and, especially, with Miguel Jordán, who must assert his authority to maintain discipline, tame egos, and keep inappropriate behavior at bay.

Anton Solyonov

"He was short in stature, powerful in the shoulders, with bushy straw-colored eyebrows under a wide-brimmed hat and an athlete's torso covered by a coat with an astrakhan collar, long to his shoes." His code name is Tolstoy, and he is the representative in Istanbul of Sovietflot, the official organization of the Soviet merchant marine. He is a man with a horrible past, through his role in the purges of the Russian merchant fleet. He is the Republican agent's liaison in Turkey and he knows when to gamble and take risks and when to be prudent and discreetly stay in the background. He is the man most affected by Jordán's missions, and also the person charged with finding a solution to make the maritime route safe for his ships again.

An interview with Arturo Pérez-Reverte

"The sea kills the good guys and the bad. It has no sense of justice."

—Why did you want to write a story about corsairs?

—For those of us who have been educated through certain books we've read, the word "corsair" has always been linked to adventure and literature. This is something you have always had inside your head from a young age and never quite forget. 'The Black Corsair,' 'Treasure Island,' and many other books, as well as subsequent film adaptations, are part of your initial education, like your first emotions and feelings. As a writer, I try, with my literature, to recapture childhood and youth, not by imitating it, but by reliving it. Literature allows me to return there with an adult perspective and project what I have experienced over the last few decades, the things that have happened to me, and, in this way, understand my past and my present. This story brings together many fundamental aspects for me. One is, as I said, the books I read as a younger person, but the Mediterranean, which is my homeland, is also fundamental. Greece is as much my homeland as the waters of Morocco, Turkey, or Spain. 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman' guaranteed me a year and a half of pleasure and travel throughout that sea. And I was very excited about it. I have an advantage: I'm a writer who can always choose what I write about. That's why I choose places that make me happy. The Aegean and the story of the ships that aided the Republic gave me the opportunity to be happy while writing this novel. On the other hand, there is a difference between a pirate and a privateer: a pirate acts lawlessly, and a privateer does so at the behest of his country or his king. A privateer has a moral justification, while a pirate lacks one. A privateer is more morally tolerable.

—What was the origin of the story?

—I'm familiar with the Spanish Civil War. I wrote 'Línea de fuego' ('Line of Fire,') and I have a large section on this topic in my library at home. At the same time, I like the sea. I'm a sailor myself, and I sail a lot. So everything came together. The story is based on a real event: the trafficking of goods and military aid from the USSR to Spain. Vessels passed through the Aegean and were attacked first by Italian ships and then by the Spanish nationalist side. There were also intelligence services in Turkey. But within that historical setting, the novel unfolds in a fictional setting: I invented an island, a mission, a crew, and what those men did. The torpedo boat is based on an authentic model I've studied well, and those crew members are what is truly typical of my novels. From those pieces, I built the story. But the circumstances are historical, and, of course, there were many sunken ships like those.

—The protagonist is an atypical hero, with a family.

—He's a professional, conventional sailor, like so many others. It's a personal tribute to these men. I grew up among merchant seamen. My father was friends with many captains who sailed to the Persian Gulf and to America. I spent my entire childhood around them, listening to the stories they told me. What I respect most in my life is a merchant seaman, especially old-school ones. I like them very much; I like their way of conducting themselves, their professional manner. Add to that my reading about them, and with all of this, I've created a very pleasant, personal, mythical, and familiar territory. Already in the second installment of my 'Falcó' series, which takes place in Tangier, there's a Republican ship, and one of those sailors I respect so much appears. This is my way of paying homage to them. I didn't want a soldier, or a career professional, or someone with an ideology. I wanted a person whom life has suddenly placed there, with all his virtues and shortcomings. This character gives me a wider scope, because war, in his case, is an accident. That's why I thought a protagonist free from fanaticism and resentment, a normal guy with an unhappy marriage and a child, was appropriate. He fulfills his obligation, which is the mission given to him. But one aspect must be taken into account: merchant sailors are very different from people on land. That detachment, that lack of connection with the mainland, the freedom that solitude on the ship gives you, which these men possess, is fascinating. At least it's always seemed that way to me. Then there's an inescapable reality: I can't write a novel about good guys and bad guys. I'm sorry. Not even if I tried: it's impossible for me. Even Gualterio Malatesta, Captain Alatriste's enemy, has a tender and compassionate side too. And this is reflected all throughout my books.

—Where does Lena, the protagonist, come from?

—From life, literature, and the women I know. There's no specific woman I've relied on to build her. There's a familiar resemblance to all the women in my books, from Adela de Otero in 'The Fencing Master' to Julia in 'The Flanders Panel', Olvido Ferrara in 'The Painter of Battles', Teresa Mendoza in 'The Queen of the South', or Elena Arbués, the bookseller in 'The Italian.' They all share that resemblance. Each novel allows me to explore the type of woman that interests me, who is complex and real. Lena Katelios belongs to this group, with a past and a career. There are few young women who interest me, literature-wise; I'm more drawn to writing about those who already have a life behind them that gives them depth. They are women who carry on them the ravages and damage caused by life. She's a type of woman I didn't find in other books. For me, they walk alone under a godless sky, like a soldier lost in enemy territory. The love of these women makes the male protagonists in my novels (like Teseo Lombardo in 'The Italian' or Miguel Jordán here, ordinary people) stop being vulgar and dull and acquire a special value. It is the gaze of this superior woman over these men that makes them a hero.

—What did you want to convey with this triangular relationship?

—To tell a story with characters and plots that are fictional but well told, so that the reader shares in their world. I don't intend to reveal the true nature of failed marriages, but rather for the reader to experience a powerful story and be captivated by it. I don't want the world to be a better place at the end of my novel; I don't have an educational mission. I only build interesting plots with the hope that the reader will experience them alongside me. In this case, I propose that you come and sink ships in the Aegean Sea and experience a triangular relationship within a failing marriage. I don't aim for anything else. All I want is to tell good stories.

—It's a story set in wartime. Are they very different from those that arise in peacetime?

—Yes. War directly, or as a background, presents unusual situations. What could otherwise happen over months or years happens in a single day. People change with the same rapidity. War imposes a speed on events that doesn't exist in peacetime. I lived through twenty-one years of war, as a journalist. Although I'd like to avoid it, my way of seeing relationships, illness, horror, failure, and devastation is tinged by war. It was my school; the perspective it gave me is the one I use as a writer. For me, war is very useful narratively because it offers me a variety of situations, tensions, and uncertainties that I find very rich and that would be harder to find in peacetime. I go often to that territory because I'm more comfortable there. It's quite paradoxical: I'm more comfortable with disaster than with normality, both in my life and in my writing. This is a consequence of the life I've led. I act more calmly, with more awareness in these situations. It's not that I seek out misfortune; I'm just used to it. When a crisis arises, my approach is more effective.

—There's a line in 'The Island of the Sleeping Woman' that says: "It's not civilized to sink ships in the 20th century."

—War is especially harsh at sea. It's already a harsh place without war, so it is even more cruel when it happens. Most people approach it as a vacation spot, but the sea has terrible moments; it has no compassion. It kills both the good guys and the bad. It has no sense of justice. The sea is very democratic: it respects neither jewels nor uniform stripes nor war prizes. If you add war to the mix, the harshness of this environment increases: the normal thing, if a ship sinks, is to pick up the survivors, but in a certain kind of war, like the one in the novel, you have to abandon them. That's the rule, the drama. And that's where the remorse comes from.

—It's also a story about friendship.

—In that respect, I draw on my personal memories. If you've lived through extreme situations, you know that tragedy and upheaval bring people together. War and survival create bonds of camaraderie. In my case, I still maintain many of those bonds with certain people. James Warner Wallace said, "I could never hate those who rode with me that day through that valley." And it's true, you are bound to those people forever. The sea is a very suitable place to create those loyalties.

Critics have said:

"I like Pérez-Reverte; he reminds me of Dumas and Salgari." Umberto Eco

"Pérez-Reverte has invented novels and genres that didn't exist in Spain." Alexis Grohmann

"Pérez-Reverte knows how to capture the reader's attention with every turn of the page." 'The New York Times Book Review'

"The creative phase Arturo Pérez-Reverte is going through is astonishing." Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, 'La Vanguardia'

"Arturo Pérez-Reverte crafts his novels like a refined and elegant old Spanish bartender who occasionally gets drunk on Corto Maltese." Minute

"The most perfect novelist in Spanish literature of our time." 'El País'