Interview with Laura Alcoba: "Para qué sirven las historias"

Abstract

Par la forêt is the latest novel by Laura Alcoba (La Plata, 1968), published by Gallimard in January this year. In it, the author tells in French a story that borders on the unspeakable: a double infanticide, several suicide attempts and the experience of exile. Griselda, mother of three, kills her two youngest children. Flavia, the eldest daughter, survives not only the early death, but also the silence that, for years, shrouds the events that cannot be explained in words. In Par la forêt, a first-person narrator who meets the protagonists of this story, listens to them, takes notes and writes, brings together in a later time the words that perhaps could not be said before.

In this interview, which took place at the café Le progrés in Paris in July 2022, Laura Alcoba shares the intimately human and writerly experience of creating Par la forêt. From this novel, in retrospect, Alcoba retraces her novelistic writing, reveals her link with translation and the mother tongue, and offers a look at what to tell, what stories are for.