Fatal Tango

Question: What inspired you to write this story?

Wolfram Fleischhauer: The first time I spent an evening in a Milonga (a tango club) I knew I would one day write a novel set in the tango universe. What immediately fascinated me were the codes. I was completely taken in not only by the sophistication of the music and the dance, but also by all the rituals that go along with it: the unspoken rules, the glances, the body language. I love codes. I think art is a way of expressing the unspeakable. So from the very beginning I had the idea of a tango dancer whose dance contains a secret.

Q: How did you become interested in tango and how did you decide to use it as the backdrop for this story?

WF: I discovered tango for two reasons: Astor Piazzolla and Feminism. Piazzolla’s album Tango Zero Hour just blew my mind. I must have listened to this record a thousand times. This was in the late 1980’s. I was living in Berlin, I had almost completed my MA in German and American Literature. I wanted to write novels but had no clear idea how and about what, and I was single again after a painful breakup. At that point in time, feminism had reached its peak, especially in Berlin. So when I visited some tango bars, I was very surprised to see that the place was teeming with women who I knew to be very outspoken about male chauvinism. The same women who considered it a provocation if you held the door for them were dancing tango in sleazy tango joints-- dressed to kill and expecting to be "led!" The Tango Renaissance in the 1980's was the first sign of a strange cultural reversal and as such it was an ideal starting point for the kind of novel I write: the cultural suspense novel.

Q: History is also an important part of this book. What research did you do in the process of writing this story?

WF: The first time I went to Buenos Aires I went mainly for the tango. I had no clear idea about my novel yet and I didn’t know all that much about the recent history of Argentina. What I saw, heard and read was so shocking, so abominable, that I actually cut my visit short by a week because I could not stand being there anymore. A year later I went back. This time, I was much better prepared. I had read a lot and I confronted the issues head-on. I interviewed many people, survivors, victims, parents and children of disappeared persons, scientists who work on mass graves, and so forth. It was a heartbreaking experience, and after some of these meetings I just went back to my hotel and cried. But now I had a means of coping with all this: my novel. I now knew what Damián had gone through and what he and Giulietta were up against. They had gotten under my skin and I was now determined to write that story. Of course, after this second visit, the plot changed significantly. I wrote a completely new draft and suddenly there was a power and urgency in the narrative that had not been there before. The novel had sprung to life.

Q: Have you always wanted to be an author? What other careers have you pursued?

WF: I always felt that I am a storyteller. But I don’t see myself as a writer or author. My ideal has always been the Renaissance man who participated in life on as many levels as possible: physical, emotional, intellectual, and artistic. Storytelling and writing the kind of books I write give me the possibility to live many lives, at least occasionally. I play the guitar pretty well and used to write folk songs and lyrical ballads. If ever I run out of material for novels, I will go back to singing my stories.