![]() But never say never….Īlexandra Christo was talking with us during her visit to FILBo, sponsored by The British Council. Does this mean the characters we know from To Kill a Kingdom will not be back in print?Īlexandra: To Kill a Kingdom was written as a stand-alone book. Sara: Your next novel Into a Crooked Place – due out later this year – takes a new direction. It’s a dream come true.Īlexandra: I would love to see in on the screen, and to see someone else’s interpretation of the story. It’s been such a joy to see the readers of the Spanish version on social media, posting photos and positive comments. I’ve been so happy with how the book looks in the Spanish version, and how supportive the Spanish-speaking community has been. I would love to read Spanish so I could see how the translation was different. It’s really strange to me now when another foreign language offer comes along, like ‘now the books being sold in Indonesia’. When you wrote the book, did you ever it imagine it being read in different languages?Īlexandra: I always dreamed of it, but I never thought it would happen. ![]() Sara: The Spanish translation Matar Un Reino has been well received in the Spanish speaking world. An important message from the book is women’s voices matter. Women shouldn’t be limited, they can have everything. So often in literature women must choose, for example between ‘love’ and ‘career’. It was important to me to have this female character, Lira, who could go after what she wants. For so long in the literary world people have acted like its revolutionary to have a woman whose ‘ambitious’ and ‘strong’, but it’s not new because women already are. Are you trying to get a message across to us girls?Īlexandra: It’s interesting that female characters are described as ‘strong’, but men are not: in books they are ‘strong’ by default. Sara: Female characters are strong in the book, a marked difference from many classical fantasy or fairy tales. But I also believe that writers should branch out, create new characters beyond what they know. As for myself, I see some aspects of my personality to be strong, have ambition, are very loyal – which I hope is what I am. Sara: Do you identify yourself with any characters in your book?Īlexandra: I hope not, they’re all murderers! People always ask my mother if she was the basis for The Sea Queen, so I feel so sorry for my mum, she’s so lovely. Sometimes I would get so tired and absent-minded I’d would cut myself cooking. It’s blood, sweat and tears with so many sleepless nights and working until four in the morning, then back to work again a nine in the morning. ![]() Then it took months more of re-writing, developing characters and filling plot holes.Īlexandra: Very. Then I had a deadline of six months for the first draft. Then one agent asked to see more and signed me to finish To Kill a Kingdom. To Kill a Kingdom was just a fun little side project with a few chapters. How long did it take to write the story?Īlexandra: Initially, I had written a completely different book to submit to (literary) agents. I also used Greek words for many of the kingdom’s names. But my book was inspired more from Greece: my grandfather is Greek Cypriot so I drew a lot from Greek mythology, but also from German folklore. Could we be living in a kingdom from your book?Īlexandra: I love magical realism and combing the strange and the ordinary and twisting it all up. There were also many pirates on the Caribbean coast here. Sara: Colombia is the land of magical realism, and here we have many stories of mythical beasts, some that transform from marine to human form. The original Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen was dark anyway – the mermaid dies in the end – and I took a few bits from Disney too. I wanted a tale with a woman having her own ambition, her own drive. What inspired such a twisted tale?Īlexandra: I wanted to re-imagine the old fairy tales, where female characters were victims of the plot and even if it was their story, a man was pushing it forward. At first glance, with a siren (Lira) as the lead character, it’s like the Little Mermaid. Sara: To Kill a Kingdom has deadly sirens, swashbuckling seafarers, and mythical lands. Our cub reporter Sara Hide – 12 years old and a huge fan of the fantasy novel – caught up with the author at FILBo this week. ![]() It’s only her first book, but already Alexandra Christo’s To Kill a Kingdom is flying off shelves worldwide, and a Spanish-language version is making waves in Bogotá. ‘Sometimes I would get so tired and absent-minded I’d cut myself cooking. Interviewer Sara Hide poses with the author of one her favourite books. ![]()
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