Andrea De Carlo on Windshift
Interview by Monika Van Lennep
(This interview can be freely reproduced, entirely or in part)

MVL: Andrea De Carlo, why did you decide to translate Windshift into English yourself?
ADC: Because every time I read a page from one of my novels that have been translated into a language I know, I feel something crucial has been lost. I guess an actor must feel the same way when he hears himself dubbed into another language. Regardless of how accurate the translator’s job, it just never sounds like the real you.
MVL: Isn’t that inevitable in a translation?
ADC: Probably, but I hate the inevitable. Especially when my style gets smoothed out and sterilized in the process, all its peculiarities washed away. That’s why I decided to do it myself.
MVL: Was is difficult?
ADC: Initially, yes. Then it became more and more natural, and after a while I really started to enjoy myself. I ended up with a total re-write, rather than a simple translation. Being the author of the original text, I felt much freer than any ordinary translator would ever be.
MVL: Why did you wait until your thirteenth novel to do it? With your other books already translated into 21 languages and 26 countries?
ADC: I guess I was waiting for the right novel, one that felt fresh enough and fun enough to work on it again. It’s not so easy to venture into another language, even less so when you’re an established writer in your native one. But in the end I liked the challenge.
MVL: Where did you learn your English?
ADC: I studied it at school, but then I started traveling, and I spent long periods of time in the USA, Australia and Great Britain. That’s the only way you get to really know a language.
MVL: Windshift  is certainly an unusual novel. To begin with, the point of view seems to shift from chapter to chapter.
ADC: That’s because each chapter is told in turn by one of its five protagonists, with his or her own peculiar way of seeing things. I wanted this to be perceptible only in a subtle way: a reader might realize it or not, the story goes on regardless.
MVL: And quite a story, too. When the four Milanese friends and their real estate agent find themselves stuck in the hills of central Italy under a pouring rain, their van in a ditch, their cell-phones unable to pick up any signal, the reader starts to shiver...
ADC: It was a little sadistic of me, I guess. But the idea was to take these affluent, highly-educated, self-confident persons scouting for their dream holiday retreat in the country, and throw them into an environment that was totally foreign to them. Unlike Tuscany, Umbria still has some pretty wild areas, and my story is not unrealistic. Something like that could actually happen.
MVL: Your sophisticated city dwellers are forced to spend a whole weekend with a group of people who are their absolute opposites, having chosen to live off the land with no electricity, no telephone, no engines, no money.
ADC: They’re no bumpkins, though. They just chose this kind of life because they refuse to be part of contemporary society as it is. But in their own way they’re as sophisticated as their counterparts, perhaps even more so.
MVL: Still, it’s hard to imagine a stronger contrast.
ADC: I like contrasts. As a novelist, I thrive on them. Playing with opposites is a great way to expose what’s hidden behind the facade of a character, and to bring out ideas, shake them up, make everything more lively.
MVL: Reading your novel, one imagines you had great fun writing it.
ADC: I did. I felt halfway between a voyeur and an ethologist, observing my protagonists’ behavior, studying their reactions, recording the way their relationships changed. 
MVL: You make it sound like it’s all real...
ADC: But it is, in so many ways. Every time I get really deep into a novel, I have the feeling that my characters develop their own lives, at least partly independent of my will. They almost always end up saying and doing things I hadn’t entirely expected, which is amazing. A lot of the magic of writing lies exactly there.
MVL: Several of your previous novels are strongly autobiographical. Is there anything in Windshift that relates directly to your life?
ADC: Almost everything, in fact. I was born and grew up in Milano, the northern metropolis where half of my protagonists live. And I’m currently based in the countryside in central Italy, close to the wooded hills of Umbria where most of the story takes place. Apart from that, the novel is filled with a lot of my own reflections on different themes, from the evolution of male-female relationships to my concern about the environment.
MVL: Doesn’t this involve a high degree of personal exposure?
ADC: It does. The fact is, I don’t care writing about things I haven’t experienced myself. Be it places, feelings, people, jobs, climates, whatever. To be able to say something that hasn’t been said before, I have to have been there.
MVL: It seems like Windshift could very easily translated into a film script. What’s your relationship with films?
ADC: I’ve always been interested in the language of films. I think novelists should feel as free to borrow from the film language as film makers have done with literature.
MVL: What have you borrowed from the film language?
ADC: Pace, for instance, which strangely often seems like a foreign notion in ‘literary’ novels. There seems to be a preconception about the fact that only the commercial page turners should be concerned with rhythm, while the literary ambitious ones needn’t worry about it. I’m also interested into a lot of other aspects of film language that can be applied to writing. Like depicting a scene in slow motion or speeding it up, cutting out frames from a sequence, showing something in an extreme close-up or as if it was seen from a distance through a telephoto lens. 
MVL: You’ve also been directly involved in film making, as assistant director to Federico Fellini.
ADC: It was an incredibly enriching experience. Fellini was an extraordinary person, and he had a totally unique way of making movies. He taught me a lot about storytelling, too. He was constantly spinning the most amazing tales, with an uncanny eye for spotting a character and developing it.
MVL: You later directed a movie yourself, based on your first novel.
ADC: That was quite an experience, too. There’s such a huge difference between writing a novel, where you’re totally on your own, and bringing the same story to life with the help of dozens of other people.
MVL: You’re also a musician, aren’t you?
ADC: I love music, listening to it and playing it. And there’s music in a written page, of course. In the sound of every word, in the rhythm of every sentence, in the recurring themes. During my public readings I usually alternate music to words, playing my own compositions on acoustic guitar and octave mandolin. 
MVL: The American edition of Windshift is printed on ‘forest-friendly paper’ (recycled using post-consumer waste). Why?
ADC: I’m actively supporting the “Writers for the forests” campaign launched by Greenpeace. The forests of the world are being destroyed at an appalling pace, partly to make wood pulp that turns into paper. I firmly believe that everybody can help make a difference in our relationship with the environment. That’s why I’ve decided to have all my novels – in Italy and abroad, in trade and paperback edition - printed on recycled or certified paper.
MVL: What do you expect from the American public, now?
ADC: I just hope that a reader who doesn’t know me will be curious enough to venture into my story, and maybe find a little bit of himself or herself in it.
MVL: Break a leg then. I mean metaphorically, not like Alessio the real estate agent does in Windshift!