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All Of It with Alison Stewart
A Magical Journey to Golden-Age Spain from Leigh Bardugo
00:23:03
A new novel from author Leigh Bardugo is a fantasy story following a maid in Golden Age Spain.
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- [00:00]
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Leigh Bardugo
Foreign.
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Kusha Navadar
You'Re listening to all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. In the latest novel from best selling fantasy writer Leigh Bardugo, a Spanish scullery maid named Lucia is trying to make daily life bearable in 16th century Madrid. And it helps that she can perform magic spells that help make her work easier and her day go faster. But when Lucia' as mistress discovers that her scullery maid can perform little miracles, she wants to show Lucia off as a party trick. But there's a problem. Lucia's magic is based partially in Hebrew. She comes from a family of conversos, Jews who have been forced to convert to Christianity. And if her true background is revealed, she could be in deadly trouble with the Inquisition. Lucia's powers catch the attention of a wealthy, powerful man who wants to submit her to a royal tournament. You see is looking for someone with magical powers to help him win his war against England. Lucia is given a mentor to help her win this contest, an immortal man named Santanel who simultaneously terrifies and intrigues Lucia. Together, they hope their magical abilities and sharp wits can save them both from the powerful forces that seek to ensnare them. The novel is titled the Familiar, kirkus writes in their starred review. Lush, gorgeous, precise and precise language and propulsive plot sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric. Leigh Bardugo is speaking tonight at the Union Square Barnes and noble. That's at 6pm but first, she joins me now in studio. Hi, we will hi. Hi Lee. Welcome to all of it.
- [02:47]
Leigh Bardugo
Hello. Thank you for having me.
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Kusha Navadar
Before we get started, I wonder if you would read a bit from the first page for us to get us set up for the story?
- [02:55]
Leigh Bardugo
Yes. If the bread hadn't burned, this would be a different story. If the cook's son hadn't come home late the night before, if the cook hadn't known he was hanging around that lady playwright, if she hadn't lain awake, fretting for his immortal soul and weeping over the future fates of possible grandchildren, if she hadn't been so tired and distracted, then the bread would not have burned, and the calamities that followed might have belonged to some other house than Casa Ordono, on some other street than Calle de dos Santos. If on that morning, Don Marius had bent to kiss his wife's cheek before he went about the day's business, this would be a happier story. If he had called her my darling, my dove, my beauty, if he had noted the blue lapis in her ears or the flower she had placed in the hall, if Don Marios hadn't ignored his wife so that he could ride out to Hernan Saravia's stables to look over horses he could never afford to buy, maybe Dona Valentina wouldn't have bothered going down to the kitchen, and all of the tragedy that was to follow would have poured out into the gutter and rolled down to the sea instead. Then no one would have had to suffer anything but a bowl full of melancholy clams.
- [04:07]
Kusha Navadar
Wow. What did you want to achieve in those first couple paragraphs?
- [04:11]
Leigh Bardugo
Oh, I wanted to set the stage for a kind of fairy tale. I wanted to establish this omniscient voice. I wanted to warn people that the story that's coming is not going to be entirely happy. And I also really didn't want to start with Lucia, my heroine, because she is ignored and invisible. It's one of the ways she survives in this world. And so it didn't make sense to put her or her ability to work these little scraps of magic at the top of the story.
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Kusha Navadar
That idea of making your main character a little bit invisible in the beginning, did that have anything to do with why you chose to set it during the Spanish Golden Age, too?
- [04:53]
Leigh Bardugo
Yes. I mean, this period is this. It's a period of, you know, theater and literature and art, and also tremendous political upheaval and religious persecution. The Spanish Inquisition, and I didn't really understand this before I started researching, but the Spanish inquisition lasted over 300 years, and it was very different from other Inquisitions that were happening. And it's fair to say, you know, sometimes people will say Spain kind of got a bad rap that, you know, ah, the Spanish Inquisition, you know, but because there were people being burned at the stake in many countries in Europe at the time. And there was an Italian Inquisition as well. But one of the things that made the Spanish Inquisition unique was that its tortures were somewhat unique. And you could be accused by anyone, and it took only one person to accuse you. And that accusation could be anonymous. And so this became a really good tool for going after anybody you didn't like very much. And also a way of putting business rivals out of work. One of the best records we have of what it was like to be imprisoned by the Inquisition is a man who was accused of practicing Islam in secret. He was a Morisco and was supposed to have converted. His name was Hieronymo Rojas. And the person who accused him was somebody who wanted to start a spice shop. Guess what? Rojas already had a spice shop. What better way to put somebody out of business?
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Kusha Navadar
And I understand that you have family ties to the period that you can trace back to Spain. Have you been able to learn about their history as well?
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Leigh Bardugo
A little bit, yeah. So my. So in 1492, big year for Spain, they gave their Jewish population two options. You can either convert to Christianity or you can leave. You can go into exile. And that wasn't just you could leave and take all your possessions with you. You were not allowed to take coin. You could not take silver or gold out of the country, or copper. And so you basically, whatever you could carry was what you could take to whatever new land you hoped to build a life in. Most of my ancestors did that, but we that there were relatives who did not and who did convert to Christianity and who did remain. And if you chose that path, then it was very hard to stay in touch with anyone in this exiled community. Because keep in mind, the Inquisition is hunting, right? They are looking for false converts who they believe are a threat to the soul of Spain. And so contact with Jewish people or Muslim people or then later Protestant people, was very dangerous. And so we lost that branch of the family tree. It vanished forever. And for me, writing this book was kind of a way to redraw that branch.
- [07:44]
Kusha Navadar
And it's interesting because my understanding, at least, is that Spain was a country at one point during medieval times where Christianity, Muslims and Jews lived in relative harmony. But by the time we meet Lucia, we learned that it's super dangerous, as you're saying, to be Jewish. What changed? What caused that change there?
- [08:01]
Leigh Bardugo
Well, that period of time is known as a convivencia. And this was under Muslim rule. And, you know, there's A lot of debate over how idyllic or non indelicate was. But relatively, this was a time when philosophy, art, mathematics really flourished because you had all of these people speaking Arabic, speaking Hebrew, translating documents. I mean, it was an incredibly. It was a great time for culture and for learning. And then you have the Reconquista when Isabella and Ferdinand reclaim Spain for the Christian world. And one of the first things they do is say, okay, everybody who's not Catholic, time to get out. It's time to convert. And they could do this now because they were safe. So first they expel the Jews. About 100 years later, they expel their Muslim population. And again, you're allowed to convert. But this becomes complicated. So if you convert, there's a brief period of time where you're safe. And then the Inquisition starts. And the goal is to, in theory, root out false converts. Now, the Inquisition became so extreme that the Pope at the time said, hey, how about we back off? We want people to convert to Christianity. This is. This is kind of our thing. And if we tell people that there's no point to converting, they're not going to bother. So you see this evolution of the Inquisition, Torquemada himself, who is known rather infamously as the architect of the tribunal, was himself descended from conversos. And then you see what's called the limpiesa de sangre las, which is the purity of blood. These are statutes that say it doesn't matter if you converted or your grandfather or great grandfather conferred it. If you have a drop of Jewish or Muslim blood, you cannot join military orders, which means you cannot rise very far, you cannot attend university, you cannot serve in public office. There's all kinds of constraints that are then put on these descendants, many generations descended, converts.
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Kusha Navadar
So even if you do convert, your station in life is basically capped.
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Leigh Bardugo
That's correct.
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Kusha Navadar
And so, you know, rich history that we're hearing here, this story takes place at the level that is very granular. And I imagine the research process for this must have been really meticulous details that you wanted to include to really capture that daily life that we see from a scullery. What did that look like? What was the research? What were details that really stood out for you?
- [10:34]
Leigh Bardugo
I'm going to be honest with you and say it was a huge pain in the butt, because all the things I just talked about to you, the big political moments, the big religious moments, those are things that have been heavily documented, heavily written about, and are still heavily debated in terms of how bad this actually was, how seriously these Statues were implemented. But when it comes to daily life and material culture, that's a little bit tougher for someone like me, who is not going to be able to engage as deeply with the source material. So I was very lucky. I had a wonderful research assistant, Robin Kello. I also had two historians read early drafts of the book to try to help me catch things I might have missed. For instance, I thought I did a very good job researching the food. One interesting thing was that if you were of the upper classes, you were supposed to eat things that were higher up, fruits that grew in trees, birds that flew in the sky, as opposed to roots and things that rooted around in the dirt. But he just made a little note in my manuscript. You know, I have a moment where Lucia was chopping carrots. There were no carrots in Renaissance Spain, so I was like, dang, I missed that one.
- [11:42]
Kusha Navadar
And speaking of Lucia, one of my favorite part of these books, of books like this that are set in fantasy, but also, you know, historically grounded, is the system of magic that you choose to use. And a big part of this book is Lucia's magic. How did you go about designing your system? I mean, for instance, she can't just make money up here, for example. What are the guidelines there?
- [12:04]
Leigh Bardugo
I mean, my goal with this book was to keep the magic very small, almost where you're not sure if it's real or fraud, because this is something that was happening at the time, right? This is a time period where there is no difference between chemistry and alchemy, where there is no difference between astronomy and astrology. So I want there to be a question mark. And even when she answers the torneo, her competitors, she's not sure if they're frauds or they're for real. And some are and some aren't. And at the time, there were characters like Lucrezia de Leon, who was some who was imprisoned by the Inquisition for claiming that she had prophetic dreams. There was a guy named Piedrola who claimed to be a prophet, but he had some very negative things to say about King Philip that didn't go over so. So well. But Lucia's magic is actually, and I'm going to correct you, it's not actually based in Hebrew. It's based in ladino, which is a mix of Hebrew and Spanish and many different languages. There's actually different kinds of ladino depending on where you were exiled in the world. And so this is really the language of diaspora. And she uses refane. And refranes are just proverbs, like you know, stitching time saves nine, but so she'll use a proverb like, quie norica no rosica. You know, who doesn't laugh, doesn't bloom. And these are the ways that Ladino still exists today. Like, we have lost most of Ladino. It is not a language a lot of people speak, but those refranes got passed down and passed down and passed down. So they were a way for me to connect with the past. And they're also a way for her to connect with her own history and her people in exile.
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Kusha Navadar
And so that connection, that lineage, that relation to your, you know, and I love the correction that you made about it as a mix. It is a diaspora. It is a combination of languages. Why was that so important to include, as in that system of magic?
- [13:52]
Leigh Bardugo
I think because, you know, there are different kinds of magic that operate in the book. There's not one universal source. But Santangel says to her that this magic is different, that it can't be worked in Castilian, in part because magic language becomes powerful in the way that it's used. And this language, I liked the idea that it had grown more powerful by being kept secret, and it had grown more powerful by moving across the sea in exile and then returning to her in letters, returning to a country that the people who were writing those letters could never return to. That, to me, felt like a secret that was powerful, but also that she had to keep.
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Kusha Navadar
Why keep? And why? What. What do you think she is going for in this book? It sounded like, in the beginning, at least when I was reading it, it felt like autonomy, but also the struggle to stay inside and not be noticed. Tell me about that.
- [14:53]
Leigh Bardugo
I mean, you know, I always say I don't really know the book I'm writing until I've written it. And what I realized I was writing was I wanted to pit this one woman's ambition against this massive historical force. Okay, so her ambition, her drive, means that in order for her to attain a better life, a more comfortable life, and also to be seen, which she longs for, she has a lively mind, and she wants to be recognized. She wants to be seen. And I think most of us can. We've been through this, right? Put me in coach. I can do it, right? Like, I've got talent, you know, give me a chance, give me a shot. And so she has all of this potential in her that has never been used, and she's just chomping at the power, but at the same time, she knows that the more powerful becomes the more influence she gathers, the more people who are seeing her, the more danger she's going to be in. Because it's not just that the king is looking for somebody who can use magic. He's looking for a holy champion, a Catholic champion, to fight Protestant Spain. Sorry, Protestant England. And I feel like there's this parallel that I didn't realize. As, you know, I'm not famous in any way, but I am a public figure. And there's this tension that has grown in me as we've been pushed to be more on social media and so forth, where, on the one hand, I want more readers, I want more attention. All we want as authors is for people to read our books. At the same time, the more attention you get, well, that can turn negative very quickly. So that tension, again, I hope, is something that will resonate with a lot of people.
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Kusha Navadar
That pressure. Yeah, absolutely. We're talking to Leigh Bardugo, author of the Familiar. This is all of it. Lee is speaking tonight at 6pm at the Union Square Barnes and Noble. Obviously, Lucia is not the only person in this book, one of the key figures, and I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, because I only read it. Hualit. Is that the right way? One of the people there to guide Lucia through this tournament is her aunt Huali, and she has shed her Jewish identity to become the wealthy mistress of one of the powerful men in Spain. Really interesting dichotomy there. What are her motivations for getting involved and helping Lucia go to this tournament?
- [17:10]
Leigh Bardugo
I mean, that's a great question. I'm sort of hesitant to spell it out because I think Walit's motives are something that Lucia is always questioning. Walit is very beautiful, but she also knows that beauty is fleeting. She has done everything she can to carve out. To carve out a life for herself, and that has meant some pretty brutal kinds of sacrifice. She is fundamentally pragmatic in the same way that Lucia is, and she is selfish in some very deep ways. But I think she also. She's someone who has been living moment to moment in a mode of survival without really ever questioning what this is gonna look like at the end.
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Kusha Navadar
So just trying to not make ends meet, but just trying to get from one place to the next.
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Leigh Bardugo
She's well beyond making ends meet. Yeah.
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Kusha Navadar
No.
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Leigh Bardugo
Waleed loves the little silk. She loves some wine. She loves some figs.
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Kusha Navadar
More like the trapeze artist who's just looking for that next rung.
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Leigh Bardugo
She's looking for the next rung. She knows how precarious her position is, and she sees Lucia as both a danger to her and also possibly one of the ways that she is going to climb higher and seek freedom.
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Kusha Navadar
And, of course, when we talk about climbing higher, there is one character that I can't not mention. Santanel. A man who we learn has been alive for a very, very long time. How have the decades of immortality affected him, do you think?
- [18:48]
Leigh Bardugo
He is not in a good mood. Angel has been alive for a long time, and life has lost all savor for him. And he originally was desperate to gain his freedom and was full of rage and a desire for revenge. But time and failure have beaten that out of him. And he's weary. He's just weary. But he also doesn't want to die. And he. When he meets Lucia, where he's essentially just grinding behind the daze and trying to work up the courage to end it all. And then along comes this scullion with a gift for magic, but more importantly, who starts to surprise him. And he is delighted to be surprised.
- [19:33]
Kusha Navadar
Cause surprising must be difficult at this point for him. You know, a surprise for me while I was reading, not to make the segue too polished, but I was thinking, what would I do if I were in that position? Would I choose to live forever if I had the option? And I was wondering for you, while you were writing this, did you ever have that question pop into your own head?
- [19:51]
Leigh Bardugo
I mean, this is something I've been contemplating since I was, like, 11 years old watching Highlander on, you know, pirated cable.
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Kusha Navadar
There can only be one.
- [19:59]
Leigh Bardugo
That's right. You know, my answer to that used to be a very firm, yeah, I would live forever because I want to know what happens next. And then I was. I. The more I've contemplated it and written about it and thought about what it would be like to watch the people you love pass and to know that their lives were ephemeral in a way that yours is not. I think would be too painful.
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Kusha Navadar
And in that sense of pain, we see. I mean, not to give anything away, sparks kind of fly in this novel. People are looking to be surprised. Where do you think people, characters in this novel, find connection in ways that we might not expect.
- [20:40]
Leigh Bardugo
I mean, Lucia and Sant angel actually have quite a lot in common because they're both serving and because they have. And it's something he advises her to use repeatedly. Like, look, you've had to spend your life observing your employers and your quote, unquote, betters, because much in the way that a child who has a difficult parent has to learn to calibrate, you have to be calibrating their moods all of the time. You have to be understanding them. That is actually kind of a superpower that they share, that they are constantly reading the people around them in a way that others haven't been forced to. Both of them have this deep desire for freedom that I think, that they connect with and a desire to rule their own fates, which they both connect with. And that's actually something that unifies, I think, many of the characters. Walit, to a certain extent, Victor, who I think it's fair to call one of the main antagonists of the piece, and certainly Valentina, who is Lucia's employer, who.
- [21:39]
Amica Insurance Announcer
You know.
- [21:39]
Leigh Bardugo
It's interesting. You said people want to be surprised. I get asked a lot about building characters, and what I say is the most boring people are the people who you meet them and you understand them perfectly right away. The exciting people, the people who really stay in our lives are the people who keep revealing interesting parts to themselves.
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Kusha Navadar
That is very interesting because that also speaks to the difference maybe, of an adult novel versus a novel for young kids. What is something that you had to switch in your approach once you began writing for adults versus kids? Kids.
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Leigh Bardugo
I mean, I don't know that that's an entirely fair thing to say about literature for young people. I think I'm asking.
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Kusha Navadar
I think I'm asking more than 10.
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Leigh Bardugo
I don't. Here's what I would say. I guess the only thing that changed for me and my approach is I do write these books differently than I wrote my young adult novels. My young adult novels, I would write what I call fast draft, or what others have called a fast draft, where I'm basically sort of moving from point to point to point and writing what is essentially an expanded outline so that I can see the beginning, middle, and end on the page. And then I can step back, see what I don't know. What I do know with these books, I do begin with an outline, but I will write the first act, and then I'll go back and I'll revise it, and then I will write up to the middle of the book, that midpoint. I'll go back and revise it. And that has been true for all of the novels I've written for adults. And I think that's partially because there's. There's a lot of complexity to it, but it's also because I am in the act of calibrating the entire time and trying to really keep my head in place with who knows what and who is feeling what in a given moment. But in terms of the difference between literature for adults and for young adults, the only thing I can really point to, aside from a certain amount of freedom I have with world building and complexity, is YA is a little more finite. We get to the prom, we get to the revolution. It's done.
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Kusha Navadar
Well, we were talking to Leigh Bardugo, author of the Familiar. Leigh is speaking tonight at 6pm at the Union Square Barnes and Noble. Lee, thank you so much.
- [23:48]
Leigh Bardugo
Thank you for having me.
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Kusha Navadar
That was it for today. We will be back with more, all of it tomorrow. We will see you then. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day.
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