Florencia Bonelli: "Ignorance is very easy to control, but it's difficult to control someone who knows."

Just days before reuniting with her readers at the Book Fair , writer Florencia Bonelli spoke with Clarín about her latest book, Yo soy el viento (I Am the Wind), from the Neville House series (Planeta), but also about her relationship with her readers, the book that changed her life, the women who inspire her, the power of reading, and history. “Ignorance is very easy to control, but it's difficult to control someone who knows: that's the history of humanity,” Bonelli said during the talk.

I Am the Wind is the final book in the Neville House saga, in which the protagonist is Manon, a young woman who takes over her family's bank in mid-19th-century England. In this final installment, the author weaves together romance, history, and suspense, taking her readers to the heart of 19th-century England and to the Río de la Plata during one of the most turbulent periods in Argentine history.

The author, known for her brave and complex heroines , invites us to reflect on the power of knowledge, the importance of reading, and the female figures who have challenged social norms throughout history. In a conversation with Clarín , Bonelli shares the challenges of creating characters as intense as Manon, a young woman who breaks barriers by running the family bank in a male-dominated era.

–Are you aware that the characters in your novels often transform your readers through the personal decisions they make?

–I'm aware of it because they told me, not because I imagined it. But yes, they tell me because I have a very fluid dialogue with them, and they tell me these things, and I say, "Oh my God, how incredible." But then I say, "Why am I surprised?" It was a book that changed my life.

–It was a book I found in my mother-in-law's library in 1997, The Arab, by Edith Hull. Today I have it, bound and treasured. At the time, I was 26 years old, and that book sparked in me an uncontrollable desire to write. I spent my time imagining dialogues, scenes, something that had never happened to me before. And one night, at dinner, after working all day (we're both certified public accountants), I said to Miguel, 'You know, that book your mom lent me does such a strange thing to me that I spend all day thinking about scenes, dialogues,' and he, being very practical, said to me, 'write them down,' and that weekend we went to buy a computer because we didn't have one at home. And I started writing. I worked for another year as an accountant, that whole year. I would work and come home, prepare dinner, wash the dishes, and start writing.

–It’s not just writing that makes you happy, reading does too, right?

–Reading is magical, I regret that the habit of reading is not so widespread.

–Do you think the habit of reading is being lost?

–I think so, and it's very deliberate, very purposeful. Books are one of the most interesting forms of human creativity there is, like music. Reading a book is like traveling. The American poet Emily Dickinson said in the 19th century: 'There is no ship like a book to travel to far lands.' Books open you up, make you more human, make you better because when you read what happens to a person, to a character, and understand why they do what they do, why they think what they think, you become more compassionate. It's difficult to understand when you're not in the other person's head, and a book allows you to enter a character's head and understand why they say what they say, do what they do, think what they think. Because if you see it from afar, you only criticize it.

–And does it contribute to critical thinking?

–Yes, absolutely. Reading also wards off diseases like Alzheimer's and others. We humans do it so automatically that we don't even realize it, but it's a complex decoding process, transforming this written language into images and thoughts. Reading is like a gym for the brain. Humans will emerge victorious from this era because they are creatures with an impressive divine spark. They will also overcome the imposition of technology and the loss of spirituality.

–What’s new in your latest book?

–I wrote it under terrible tension; I ended it all tense, almost breathless because I had to resolve so many unresolved issues, so many loose ends. The second book of The Neville House ended very badly, and the readers were desperate. “You can't do this to us,” they told me. And I told them, “Be patient, you know all my books have happy endings.” But anyway, you have to get through it, and they suffer alongside the characters; they feel it in their bodies. It was a book I loved writing. It was a celebration for me to sit down and write, even with the darkest characters, whom you also need to make a complex plot. This book was an adventure; of course, it has a romantic story, but it also has some thriller, suspense, and history. A significant portion takes place in the Río de la Plata, during the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas and the death of Quiroga, which was crucial for Argentine history. His death was a turning point. There was one model with Quiroga, and then without him, we moved to a completely different model. I always wrote it with my readers in mind: I told myself, they're going to like this, they're going to agree with this, they're going to kill me here.

–Which women inspire you to create these captivating female characters?

–Actually, I'd like to be like them. I'm inspired by my shortcomings: I'd like to be brave like them, determined like them. This book is interesting because she ends up being the director of her family's bank, something that's unusual today, let alone in the 19th century. I wanted to create this character, but I told myself it was implausible at one point. And then, through research, I discovered two great historical figures who made it. One is Nasi, who lived during the Renaissance, in the 16th century, in the 1500s. She was from a very wealthy Jewish family in Portugal who were bankers, and her husband's side was also bankers. She was widowed, her father died, and she was left in charge of the two banks and began to manage everything, but on the run, because they were also throwing her out for being Jewish. Incredibly, she ended up being welcomed with open arms into the Muslim Ottoman Empire. In this book, I took the liberty of making Manon a descendant of Gracia Nassi. And the other is a banker who also existed in 1830, contemporary to Manon, in England.

–How important it is to know history, isn’t it?

"That's why they teach us history so poorly, so you don't learn the truth, the interesting things in history. For example, I'll give you a case. If I say Cleopatra to you, what do you say? Very little. Cleopatra was one of the most intelligent women of antiquity, who spoke seven languages. She was of Greek origin; in fact, her name is Greek. Her family never learned to speak Egyptian, yet she said, 'If I'm going to rule this people, I have to learn the language of my people.' She had been trained by the best philosophers and mathematicians. A brilliant woman who saved Egypt from ruin. Ignorance is very easy to control, but it's difficult to control someone who knows: that's the history of humanity."

Florencia Bonelli will present La Casa Neville 3. I am the wind on May 3 at 2:30 p.m. in the José Hernández room of the Pabellón Rojo.