Why write on the American Revolution instead of other historical events?
Because that is the moment when the US were born, separating from Europe. It is the point of origins of the troubled, love-hate relationship we all have with our North-American “cousins”. In all your historical novels there’s a reflection on the present. What aspects of the present a novel like Manituana may cast light upon? Manituana was written during George W. Bush’s so-called “War on terror”, and it absorbed that kind of atmosphere: the Bush-Blair-Aznar summit in the Azores, the war on Iraq, the tortures at Abu Grahib, waterboarding in Guantanamo etc. The book deals both with the official myths of the American Revolution and the myths of “the other America”. What are those myths? Why is it important to rediscover the 18th century America’s other myths? “No taxation without representation”, “All men were created equal” etc. Those are the Revolution’s official myths. But that’s only the surface, the smoke-screen. The revolution was made because the settlers wanted the Indian lands, a
