Joan-Lluís Lluís and his orangutan mythology

During the presentation tour of Junil a les terres dels bàrbars (Club Editor, 2021), with which he won awards such as the Òmnium and the Crexells, Joan-Lluís Lluís (Perpignan, 1963) explained an Australian mythological folk tale about the origin of language that linked very well with that of the character who entered the world of letters alongside Ovid. Now he presents Una cançó de pluja (Club Editor), an animal fable about evil that seemingly couldn't be more distant, but at the same time maintains the idea of ​​​​journey and growth.

It stars an orangutan who escapes from a poachers' boat and struggles to return to her forest, a journey during which she once again clashes with humans, an experience that ends with abuse. The story's origins are distant and complex: "Many years ago, on a visit to the zoo with my children, I saw a gorilla and we looked at each other through a glass window, and I wondered what it was thinking, even if it could see me. Later, after seeing a photograph of a majestic orangutan, as there are thousands of others, I immediately thought of Priam, King of Troy, and then I thought about making an adaptation of The Odyssey in Borneo, with animals. I started doing tests and it was going well." Reality, however, prevailed: “I learned about a true incident, a case of abuse, which literally made me explode the novel and put a stop to it, but I realized I couldn't just let it go; that would have seemed cowardly. I didn't want it to be a documentary; I wanted to maintain the novel, the fiction, and that's probably why my shortest novel is the one that took the longest. And it's been four dense years, with infinitely more questions than clear answers.”

Read also

In this literary world, "orangutans are animals; they're not anthropomorphized like Walt Disney characters. They're animals, but they communicate," and humans don't come off well, because of this "chilling real-life event that is a point of human evil." It was difficult for her: "When I began to delve into the real-life event, I was suffocating; I couldn't continue; I needed a breath of fresh air. With the naive vision that when there is evil, goodness is born to counteract it, an old woman emerged who, moved by empathy, helped her."

All with a real event in the middle that I wanted to explain without dumbing down the reader: "I tried to be very clear without going into too many details, but without leaving anyone in any doubt, with a significant use of ellipsis. Furthermore, it was important that it not refer to sexual perversion, bestiality, or anything like that, but rather something else: power, bragging, and commercialism taken to the most disgusting extreme possible."

“Literature doesn't always have to be kind; you have to accept that harshness is part of life.”

“In this novel, I felt discomfort with a certain intensity, and I've never felt so uncomfortable with things I've written before, but I've tried to make it less uncomfortable to read. For some readers, it will be, I have no doubt, and I feel bad about it. It's not intentional, but literature doesn't always have to be pleasant; it has to explain things or show worlds, and we have to accept sometimes that harshness or indescribable or almost unimaginable things are a part of life,” he says.

Lluís speaks about oppression and resilience, but insists that he "has been careful, deliberately, to ensure that there is nothing that might make one think of the Catalan language as a subject for reflection, because that's not the topic." "But everyone has their own misfortunes and has to bear them, and therefore, one way or another, it always ends up coming out. It's not a novel of denunciation, which generally doesn't work. It's not an act of activism."

Nor does he strictly denounce humanity: “Civilization has many good things, even for animals. Some are fascinated by music, which is abstract, and that means they have affective capacity; they can feel emotions through something intangible like music. But what price do they have to pay for that? There's a price for everything, in general. The attraction of beauty can be a trap.”

The Roussillon-born writer did his research: “I wanted them to be real animals with proven behaviors, but we don't know what goes on in an animal's head, especially in primates, which are the most evolved and closest. So I decided to be generous and gave them things they probably don't have, but it's a fable, and I give them the ability to speak and communicate telepathically, and what for me would be the ultimate gift, a mythology, which has allowed me to invent gods and invent a creation.”