Pablo Escobar seems to be in vogue these days, due in large part to the hit series Narcos from Netflix, but for those who lived through his "reign," the reality of the ruthless killer and drug lord was vastly different (and far less glamorous) than a made-for-television portrayal, particularly when viewed through the eyes of a child. Enter Ingrid Rojas Contreras and her debut novel, , which tells the story of an unlikely friendship between two girls as the bloodshed wrought by the Medellin Cartel in 1990s Colombia remains ever present in the background.
Audible Editor Kyle sat down with the award-winning Contreras to discuss not only what it means to grow up in a war-torn country and then revisit that past, but also what it means to a family when they decide to uproot their lives and plant themselves in another country in search of safety and peace.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Kyle Souza: Let's talk about your brilliant debut, Fruit of the Drunken Tree. We recently did a feature on how books written from the perspective of a child can illuminate very serious topics sometimes far better than when they're approached from the perspective of an adult, and I'm curious: Why did you make the decision to tell the story from a child's perspective, and what do you think you gained from having these youthful points of view?
Ingrid Rojas Contreras: I was thinking about how when you're a child, you understand things in part, and when there is violence surrounding that child, it becomes even more intense. The situation intensifies. Even when you're a child, you pick things up and you get the gist of it. You know that there is violence happening, and you know that perhaps there is danger surrounding you. It's a little bit of a tragic situation because often children can't figure out things quickly enough.
As I was thinking about Colombia in the '90s and the '80s, and how politically the president had less power than [drug lord] Pablo Escobar and there were all these things that seemed to be out of the control of the people who are supposed to be controlling and keeping the country safe. It felt like we could think of all Colombian citizens as children revisiting that time when you're not in control of anything, and the situation is hard to understand. So I thought that to choose a child who's going through two different types of violence, it would create a kind of mirror to what it was like to live in Colombia regardless if you were a child or an adult.
I also was very interested in their innocence and in the way that children can misinterpret the political information that they do get. We are getting the whole picture and so it becomes even more tragic to read from the standpoint of a child who is trying to piece it together, but can't do it fast enough.
