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Sebastian Fitzek and the Psycho Thriller |
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| 08/12/2009 |
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The second day of The Dark Page was dedicated to German writer Sebastian Fitzek, who was born in 1971 in Berlin (“a city where, apart from the mountains and sea, you have everything”) and came to the Noir fest to present The Child, which was published in Italy (as Il Bambino).
His presentations are usually much more theatrical that what we saw today. “Sometimes I stage a small performance. When my first book came out, the trades only wrote about what I looked like. At the time I wrote glasses and they said I looked like Harry Potter, not like a writer of psychological thrillers! So once I decided to hold a presentation where I dressed up like Hannibal Lecter, in a straightjacket, and a friend of mine pretended to be a psychiatrist and told the audience not to read my book.” Fitzek’s desire to involve his readers can also be seen on his Internet sites, interactive experiences in which his stories take on different shapes.
At Courmayeur, however, he concentrated above all on his writing, and the definition of a psychological thriller. “I don’t write action books but psychological thrillers that probe the contradictions of the human soul,” he said. “Our mind is like the depths of sea: we know it exists but we’ve never been there. I’m interested in seeing how characters react when they’re under pressure.”
A law graduate, Fitzek turns to his friends when it comes to analyzing mental illness. He explained: “I’m very interested in the relationship between a patient and a psychiatrist, because not only is there a dialogue, there’s also conflict. This situation creates tension, and this tension interests me.”
The Child centers on a 10-year-old boy who has terminal brain cancer and obsessively claims he was a serial killer in a past life. He even manages to prove his obsession. “People usually think they are the reincarnation of important historical characters, like Napoleon or Joan of Arc,” said Fitzek. “My idea came about talking to friends. I wanted to tell a story about someone who instead was a serial killer in a past life. I chose a child as a main character because I was interested in someone ‘pure,’ a character you could trust. It wasn’t easy because until recently in Germany you couldn’t get a book published if you had a child in danger.”
Fitzek’s next book will be the first set somewhere other than Berlin: “I want to set it on a ship from New York to Hamburg. But it’s still a nice, claustrophobic setting!’
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