I had already written the first draft of my novel, in which the action took place in classical Athens. I had seen it as a novel of suspense, with a supposed investigator of that period, Heracles Pontor, and a series of murders to be solved, and that was that. But then it occurred to me that if we imagined that the story had been written back in those days I would need a translator in order to "read" it, as with any other text in Greek. Just as I thought this, the figure of the Translator - still ghostly, still sketchy - was born in my mind.

And he came to life strongly: he wanted to "come into" the plot, he wanted to be included, come what may. But what did the Translator of a detective novel, however "historical" it might be, have to do with anything? It seemed to me that if I included him, my story would turn into something else. It might still be a thriller, and I might even still like it, but it would be another kind of story, much stranger than what I'd first imagined, much stranger than the plots of the other thrillers I'd read.

Since I was a little scared of this Translator, I decided to eliminate him, get rid of him, get him out of my head. But the Translator (about whom I still hadn't written a single word) refused to leave. "I'm not going," he told me. "You're going to have to create me and write me into your wonderful story, because I'm not going."

    -ESSAY: A character in search of an author: José Carlos Somoza was happy with his book - then the Translator arrived (José Carlos Somoza, 12/13/02, The Guardian)