Armando Lucas Correa
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
Author I draw inspiration from: I've always been obsessed with historical events that no one talks about, those events people want to file away and forget. First was the tragedy of the MS Saint Louis that, thanks to my Cuban grandmother, I first heard about as a kid. When I started researching what happened aboard the Saint Louis —and to the passengers who were sent to France after Cuba, the U.S., and Canada denied them entry— I found this idyllic post card from Oradour-sur-Glane, a small town in Haute Vienne, close to Limoges, France. One day during the war, the Nazis arrived there, locked up all the women and children in a church, and set them on fire, alive. They shot the men and tried to erase that town from the face of the Earth. In this genocide, directed by the Nazi SS, members of the French army participated as well.
I researched the event tounderstand, to try to make sense of the Nazi mentality, to read up on eugenics —that pseudo science whose objective was to improve the human race. What no one talks about in this case is that Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by studies that originated in Pasadena, California, during the 1920s.
When I was writing my first novel, The German Girl, I almost mixed it all together in one book until I came to the realization that it would be an impossible task. The MS Saint Louis gave rise to The German Girl, Oradour-sur-Glane to The Daughter’s Tale, and eugenics to what will be my third novel, The Night Traveler, to be published in 2021, which will close my WWII trilogy.
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
Favorite place to read a book: At the terrace in my country house in upstate New York.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Aureliano Buendía from One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: When I was 10 years old and I read Madame Bovary.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Hardback
The last book I read: Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
Pen & paper or computer: Computer. MacBook Air, 11 inches.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Hadrian, from Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: Editor
Favorite decade in fashion history: 1930's
Place I’d most like to travel: Cairo
My signature drink: I normally don't drink but when I do, I have a Mojito
Favorite artist: Billie Holiday
Number one on my bucket list: Live for a year in Paris
Find more from Armando, here:
Website: armandolucascorrea.com
Twitter: @armandocorrea
Instagram: @armandocorrea
Facebook page: Armando Lucas Correa
Author Interview - Armando Lucas Correa
