Alejandro Puyana: ‘We are already seeing the catastrophe that the Trump administration represents for Venezuelans’
The author of ‘Freedom is a Feast’ tackles the political evolution of Venezuela through a fast-paced narrative, aiming to reconcile his personal connection with his homeland
The idea started growing between Texas and Venezuela until it snowballed into a novel. In Austin, Alejandro Puyana, 43, started writing about a kidnapper, inspired by one of the people who had kidnapped his younger brother in 2012. His aim was to understand his country’s reality and come to terms with his feelings of guilt for living in peace in the United States while his family suffered from the insecurity plaguing Venezuela. But the project quickly grew, evolving into Freedom is a Feast, a multivocal novel published last August that spans several decades of history. “I realized that the book was going to explore the situation of the left in Venezuela,” says Puyana via video call from his studio, as if it were a small achievement.
