THE PRESIDENT AND THE FROG by Carolina De Robertis — Publishers Weekly 'Carolina De Robertis Seeks a Greater Truth in Fiction'

Publishers Weekly | June 11, 2021

I’ll be frank—there were times working on this book when I definitely felt like I was just diving into the water in the dark,” admits novelist Carolina De Robertis. She’s seated in front of a wall of books—“just a fraction, of course, of the books in the house”—in the home she shares with her wife and their two school-age children in Oakland, Calif., for a Zoom call. “At times, the only way I could continue to work on the book and really give it my best as a writer was to secretly call it the Weird Book.... Yes, just put a neon sign over the metaphorical door, it’s weird.”

In The President and the Frog (Knopf, Aug.), her sixth book, the 45-year-old writer says she’s seeking something greater than truth, or, as she puts it, the ability of fiction to “use invention to more freely explore the truth.”

It opens with an 82-year-old former leader of an unnamed Latin American country being visited by a Norwegian journalist for an interview. Noticing in her something the narrator calls “the listening gift,” he wonders if he should finally reveal a long-kept secret: that talking to a frog during his time in solitary confinement when he was imprisoned for inciting revolution was what kept him alive.

The basis for the character of the aging politician was Uruguayan president and former guerrilla José Mujica, who spent 12 years in prison and later became known for his quest for human rights. Mujica, president from 2010 to 2015, donated most of his salary to charity and stayed in his own humble home, where he continued to work the land himself. And the frog is inspired by, well, a frog.

Follow the link above to learn more.