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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to this episode of Bibliotequeando, I'm your host Ricardo Lugo, very excited to bring you this episode where we will talk with the author Frida Isberg, author of the brand, of course she is Icelandic, so this conversation will be in English, for those who do not know the language, do not worry, you can go to the YouTube channel, the link is in the description.
There you can see this video of this conversation with the subtitles in Spanish. And for those who do not know, the brand deals with a semi-dystopian, futuristic world set in Iceland, where there is an exam, there is a test that measures the empathy, the sensitivity of people. But the exam quickly becomes a political instrument. Whoever passes the exam has more benefit.
It is categorized, marked as someone correct in society. Those who do not take the exam or those who do not pass the exam So, Frida Eastberg, thank you for taking the time. We're very, I feel like, two very uh, different people in the sense that grew up in very different places. And well, we found so much common ground. I like when that happens.
I find common ground with an author about what they write, what they talk about. And it wasn't, I've talked about this book on social media before with people who, um,
listen to me or follow me and i recommended the book was very excited when it came out in spanish so very happy to have you here frida so thank you for being here if you can tell the audience uh who you are how you got started into i guess literature writing and what the book is just briefly what it's about okay thank you also ricardo for for inviting me
Yes, I am. Okay, I am Frida. I am 31 years old from Iceland. I live in Reykjavik, which is the capital city and... I started writing very young. I grew up with a single dad who was a landscape photographer. And he would always say to me when I came home from school and said, I don't want to be a police officer or I want to be a doctor or something.
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Chapter 2: What is the premise of Frida Isberg's novel 'La Marca'?
But yeah, I went to creative writing in the University of Iceland. And there I had, by that point, I was 25 and I had already kind of thrown away two manuscripts of poetry because I didn't feel that they were good enough. And then, you know, after like Just doing the masters I finally got the confidence to follow my writing through and So The Mark is my fourth book, actually.
I had published two poetry collections and one short story collection. And it was really like the short story collection is my kind of debut in Iceland. You know, that's what kind of put me on the map and made it possible for me to become a professional writer. So I guess that when I was...
looking for or i wasn't exactly looking for um content or like an idea for a novel but i was i would i would only always have the rule that that i would just write like if i got an idea there that i would just write um you know i i i was not gonna force an idea to become a novel the idea would have to be big enough to sustain a novel. It had to be the other way around.
Instead of growing an idea into a novel, then I would... My rule was kind of that the idea had to be a novel or if it was not a novel, then it would be a short story. And then... this idea came in 2018 about The Mark to write a utopia. And so by that time in my life, I mentioned my single dad and it was just the two of us.
We were always just like, he would buy me like matching fleece sweaters and, you know, he was kind of like the coolest, coolest dad of the class. You know, he would always kind of allow us kids to do like adrenaline sports and buy us pizza and let us watch the movies that we're not supposed to watch and stuff like that. So I always like my dad was completely like my hero.
And then like I got the freedom to become like the person that I, you know, like I got complete freedom to be like with the wild kids out all night, you know. And I started hanging out with other arty kids who were going to go to the art high school. And we obviously decided that we were left side of the field of the political spectrum.
And we started reading Marx and we started reading philosophy. And then I remember I was like 15 or 16 when I came down. downstairs from my bedroom, teenage bedroom. And the mayor of our town was in the kitchen having coffee with my father. And he was like very big, like a very big capitalist mayor. You know, he was like building towers and, you know, very conservative.
And after he left, I was like, why was this guy in our house? And my dad was just like, what? Didn't I tell you? I'm running for office for the conservative party. And so my father was a conservative and I had no idea until I was, you know, 16 or 15 or something. So that was just like a complete crash of and clash of realities for me.
It was just like my cool dad and then a conservative capitalist, you know. And from that moment on, we were fighting like cat and dog. It was just completely... Um, and it just, it just, uh, escalated year from year, uh, until, you know, when I was, um, obviously like just about everything about like refugees, um, feminism, uh, me too, obviously in council culture and.
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Chapter 3: How did Frida Isberg's upbringing influence her writing?
And of course it is in a way, you know, we need to always learn how to empathize with each other, everybody. But I think it can also be a bit blinding when it comes to judgment. And I think, and that was a bit like what I was looking at as well, navigating in the book.
I saw your, you had this, you have this video online where you're reading some passages from the book and answering some questions. And you talked about politics, politia, like the origin of the epistemology of the war and this mentality of, if you're not with us, you're against us that we have today. Um, uh, I don't know.
I'm young enough, but old enough to remember sort of a world without, you know, information on your phone 24 seven. And my intuition is that this hasn't helped that divide. I think in different pockets of the world, the world was already divided, you know, different places that, um, either totalitarian governments like we did
my generation or, you know, different political situations, but at the macro level, it feels like the world has definitely gone more your side, my side type of, uh, type of dynamic. Do you, this is personal observation for you, but do you think this is somehow, is there something, is this always, always been the case?
And then social media just gave us access to it, or is it that it has exacerbated, has made it worse somehow?
Well, that was also kind of... Obviously, because we weren't politically active before social media, basically. So we maybe don't have the... We cannot really compare notes, you know, but after the book came out, then I was talking about polarization because of social media and because of the algorithms, you know. And I was always talking about that.
And then there would always be a person in the room that was maybe like 70 plus or something. And they would tell me like, okay, but like polarization in media has always been the case. Like there were papers that were on the left side and then there were papers that were on the right side. And those two papers were not really, you know, talking together.
Like they would have different information. They would put different meanings into the same words, just like you're saying. So polarization is nothing new. But what is maybe new is that... You can become an extremist in a day in Iceland, in the US, in Venezuela, in France, you know. And you can kind of tap into the same extremities, like tap into the five same extremities in, you know, one week.
And suddenly you're in this herd of people that are anti this, this, this, this, this, you know, and before, you know, in, in, before the internet, you would be like an extremist in one thing. And people would kind of like, just like, Oh, you're, where did you get that information? You know? And so it's like, the extremities were just much less, you know.
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Chapter 4: What inspired the concept of empathy testing in 'La Marca'?
Like, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're, you're an extrovert and it wasn't necessarily that you were raised in a certain way. It's just, you know, your brothers and sisters, they're all introverts, but you're extrovert for whatever reason. Um, it's good empathy be like that. I feel like Tristan had that sort of,
Kind of like, you know, the tests, it reminded me of American born but Mexican by blood say here in Texas that they didn't cross the border, the border crossed them. They were here before. And then the U.S. kind of kept pushing to the west. Tristan is just a normal person and then suddenly there's a test and then he's not normal anymore.
That's sort of like the vibe that he, his argument to some extent was that. and you know there's a journey that he takes in the in the novel but do you think that's If we do have a test, to some extent, would that be a potential problem? Or what problems do you see with it?
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Um, sorry, you, you asked the question in the middle there that I was going to answer and then I forgot.
No, yeah. Sorry. That, that, you know, do you think that, well, one, do you think that this is doable as far as can some, some, some form of government have a test that's more psychological, you know, not, not driving tests, not an SAT score or IQ tests, which is kind of a psychological test. But can we see it?
And if we do see it, is there something, you know, that's potentially, is it nature versus nurture type of argument? You know, where does it come from?
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