Edney Silvestre
Happiness is Easy is inspired by a true event that moved me – and I found it staggering. Not only was a little boy kidnapped violently - he was the son of housekeeper’s in a rich neighbourhood of Sao Paulo - but once the kidnappers discovered they had taken the wrong child, they killed him and threw his body into a dam on the outskirts of the city. In spite of the brutality and absurdity of the act, only one newspaper at the time reported the crime, in a short article hidden away in the back of the newspaper, and that was the only mention of it. I was shocked with how little importance was given to the life, the fear, the pain of this poor child and his parents. And that has been in my mind ever since. So through my writing Happiness is Easy, I could give that boy another chance. And embrace hope.
Please tell us about the character of Olavo Betterncourt.
Olavo was once an idealistic young man in advertising, a copywriter who loved poetry, old songs and black and white movies, who married a Human Rights activist and became the loving father of two girls. But that was before he entered a corrupt circle of political power that made him a very, very rich man. By the time the novel begins, he heads one of the country’s biggest advertising agencies, has married a stunning former model/escort who loathes him and with whom he maintains an intense and sadistic sex life.
How much has your background in journalism, playwriting and scriptwriting help you to write books?
All the fiction I write is deeply rooted in my journalistic experience and my belief that historical events affect our lives in ways we simply have no way of avoiding however hard we might try to protect ourselves. So the characters in my novels, in my plays and in my film scripts are affected by true events, some of which I have witnessed myself, like the 9/11 attacks in New York or a shooting between the police and drug dealers in a slum in Rio. My first novel, If I Close my Eyes now takes place at the height of the Cold War, as the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union is played out in the lives of two boys in a small town in Brazil. The heads of the gang of kidnappers in Happiness is Easy are former agents of the military dictatorship in Chile, operating in a world of diminishing military power and US influence, the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the overpowering domination of the music of Madonna and Whitney Houston
You have reported from many different destinations, so which has been your most memorable?
Although my reports on the suffering of ordinary people in Iraq still breaks my heart, especially in light of the fact that the world leaders were incapable – or indifferent – to stop it, I believe that nothing I reported before, or will report in the future, will be as memorable, or will have the magnitude, or the consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11th in New York City.
How did it feel to be the first Brazilian journalist to be on the site of the World Trade Centre?
By the time of the 9/11 attacks I had been living in Manhattan for a decade. I had seen the decadence and the rebirth of the city. I had friends in New York. As a city that embraces immigrants from all over the World, it made me feel home. So the destruction of not only that large and iconic part of New York, but also an era of peace was quite a blow to me. That day I witnessed what seems to me the beginning of the end of America’s confidence in their government’s ability to protect their nation.
Please tell us about being an anchor on Globonews Literatura.
That is certainly the most pleasant of my journalistic activities. Just imagine, I read all the books I can get my hands on, I talk to some of the most interesting and bright people one can ever meet and I get paid for it.
You have interviewed many Nobel Prize winners on the show, so who has been your favourite guest to talk to?
It was an unforgettable pleasure to visit and interview Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, for sure. Or listen to the brilliant words of Mario Vargas Llosa, or the keen analysis of Nadine Gordimer on literature and politics. But no matter how much I enjoyed being with these Nobel Prize winners, nothing can compare with the joy of being so affectionately received and spending time at José Saramago`s refuge in the island of Lanzarote, near the coast of Africa.
What is next for you?
This coming September I have a new novel and a play coming out in Brazil, titled Good Night to You All (Boa Noite a Todos). They both deal with the same theme and the same character – a woman who lived and loved without any limits, and who is now losing her mind and her memory. A perfect role for Helen Mirren, by the way.