Questioning Jose Agualusa

You know that saying about giving an urgent job to a busy woman? Well, I've also learned that a winner will come up with a winning question -- even if I don't know who she is at first. The best question submitted in the contest to win a copy of Jose Agualusa's The Book of Chameleons: A Novel is from Emmy Award winner Sonya Chrisman (not pictured at the left). She is a host, producer and writer for the public television station WNMU-TV in northern Michigan. She's already won Emmies for documentaries.

The best question, in my estimation, was this:

If you could be any character in your book, which would it be, and likewise, which would you not want to be?

When I finally tracked down Sonya (my first email went missing), she had this to say about her winning entry:

The question intrigues me with the genre of his novel. A memory is very precious to people. They are not only something very personal, they're free. Then, when we begin to lose our memories due to illness or old age, it's a tragedy. In Mr. Agualusa's book, memories are more than just precious. They are a precious commodity. If his world were a reality, which end of the spectrum would he rather be on character wise, the one that sells the memories or the one who receives them?

Sonya's query, and a few I managed to think up on my own, are currently in translation for the Portuguese-speaking Agualusa. Stay tuned for the interview.

Incidentally, the photo at the top is the only one I could find of the elusive Sonya. To be more precise, I think this is her alter ego, a.k.a. "Kirby".