Scottish novelist Lizzie Eldridge speaks to Peter Farrugia about her writing, inspiration and life-changing journey to Spain.

“Duende is the painful struggle to express real truths, the deep song of gypsy tradition, a power that comes up through the earth that’s both difficult and beautiful.”

Knowing that one of his descendants was contacting me about the novel I’d written was an amazing feeling

These are the feelings Lizzie Eldridge has tried to express in her novel Duende, a historical and psychological investigation into Spain’s tumultuous fascist history. Of particular importance are those brave voices of freedom who dared speak out against oppression.

“The book is trying, this is what I hope it’s done, to express duende as part of Federico Garcia Lorca.

“But it’s also about philosophical and artistic issues and I wanted a sense of it to permeate the book. If I’ve accomplished that I will be so proud.”

A labour of dedication, Eldridge worked on the novel every evening and across busy weekends for months to create a landscape of the artistic, philosophical and emotional lives of people in a world undergoing massive change.

Absorbed in the real connection she felt with her characters and her narrative, the writing of the novel was filled with serendipitous moments that shaped the story in some surprising ways.

“I first came across Lorca’s writing at university and fell in love with him. I didn’t know much about him then, but his whole life story was compelling.”

In 2009, feeling frustrated with Malta and ready for a break, the author visited Madrid and spent five days in the city.

“I’d gone to meet a Cuban friend of mine but after we’d spoken for a while on the first day he suddenly vanished. I was deserted in Madrid without knowing much of the language or where anything was – all I had was a pocket dictionary!”

Resolved to put her time to good use, Eldridge plotted out the story she knew she wanted to write. The hostel where she was staying was on the same road as the Teatro Espanol and on the last day of her visit she walked up to the teatro.

“I hadn’t been there at all, but I saw a statue in front of the theatre. It was Lorca – he’d been my neighbour all that time. It was just magical.”

A week after she returned to Malta, authorities began excavating Lorca’s body. Shortly after the excavation and the public discussions that surrounded it (laying the spectre of Spanish fascism to rest), the novel began to take shape.

Ultimately, archaeologists found nothing in the place where Lorca’s body supposedly lay.

“You can’t always trust witness reports when it comes to this kind of thing,” says Eldridge.

“He’s probably buried in a mass grave, God knows where. What’s so poignant is the way that his story intersects with Spanish history.

“After Franco, Spain tried forget all of that history but the 2007 Historical Memory Law meant that people were finally ‘allowed’ to remember.”

Six weeks later the novel was coming together, fast.

“Although when I started it I had no idea the novel would involve Lorca so closely. There was no way I could do that, it felt arrogant. But the novel was set in the right time period and so much had happened that I felt like I had to try.”

After writing 50,000 words in two months, Eldridge penned a scene where one character, Jose, gives a lecture.

“I wrote that chapter then stopped and thought, I really should do some hard research to get this totally right.”

When she had read up on the political situation itself, in all its complexity, Eldridge changed the entire scene.

“I’d written it like a lecture being delivered in Glasgow in the 1980s, all very nice and civilised. But in reality these characters were going through the most brutal oppression.”

There was a similar change of direction after Eldridge wrote a description about a series of paintings by another character, the artist Nayo. They were “atmospheric paintings”, says Eldridge, but after she’d done her research one event in 1909, ‘the Tragic Week’, suddenly put it all in context.

Her protagonist (who’d have been nine years old) would have seen that week-long protest begin, the burning of churches and crazed rioters.

“The painter should be painting those powerful memories”, and the pieces of his life began to fall together.

The novel was finished in February 2011 and that marked the beginning of a real struggle to get published.

“I got a lot of polite rejection slips, they felt like a gentle break up,” laughs Eldridge.

With no agent, Eldridge turned to writers’ websites and found one, www.nightreading.com, perfectly suited to her needs. It offers a monthly competition for best first chapter with an e-book publication prize. She won on the strength of her writing, and the publishers took it from there.

“Getting published is an amazing thing but you have to make people aware that your book exists, among millions of others. Promotion is key and I’m still working on promoting the book. But people have started to take notice – after the novel had been published, I received an e-mail from Lorca’s niece… it was an indescribable feeling. I had a picture of Lorca by my computer, and knowing that one of his descendants was contacting me about the novel I’d written was an amazing feeling.”

The e-mail was a privileged invitation for a copy of Eldridge’s book to form part of the Lorca Foundation library in Madrid.

With work already underway on a second novel, Eldridge is keen to keep in touch with the powerful experiences of her first book.

“The new story will explore Santeria, a sort of hybrid religion that’s popular in South America. It’ll have a contemporary setting, following a woman who discovers connections between the characters of Duende and her own life.”

For all the layers of plot and cast of intriguing characters, Eldridge has ultimately created a moving homage to modern Spain’s foremost man of letters – and readers can’t help but be swept up by her fierce passion for his “painful struggle to express real truths”.

Duende is currently available for purchase from http://Amazon.com and http://Amazon.co.uk .