Kim Sherwood, the novelist who made James Bond disappear and created a black and gay agent

After the controversy caused by the latest twists of James Bond, the new novel of the superspy created 70 years ago by Ian Fleming presents an even more extreme twist than those proposed by No time to die:

disappearance.

Or, what is the same, turning him into a

, the classic

mechanism that allows the plot to be unleashed but is basically just an excuse.

The debate about whether the next film Bond can be black, gay or even a woman continues (although this last option has already been ruled out by the producers) and Kim Sherwood (Camden, England, 33 years old), the first woman to undertake a novel of the character, choose

(Roca) for an approach that makes it possible to face this update in the inclusive terms that are claimed from the saga and, at the same time, preserve the original characteristics of the hero.

In the novel, Bond has been missing for more than a year, his absence permeates everything and three other double-zero agents, those two numbers that give carte blanche to liquidate enemies without having to give explanations, take center stage in a recognizable setting, full of of recurring but updated secondaries: Moneypenny has been promoted and is the boss of section 00, and there is a new M and a new Q, now reimagined as a supercomputer (or an artificial intelligence much more efficient than ChatGPT) managed by a couple of computer geniuses in their twenties.

Sherwood,

since he saw

when he was less than 10 years old, was commissioned by the heirs of Ian Fleming with a new trilogy of novels in which he had to introduce new spies, expanding the universe of the saga.

“Bond is the star of this world and he has his own gravitational force, to the point that, when he appears, everything revolves around him.

It is impossible to put new characters next to him and have someone pay attention to them or become attached to them while Bond is in the shot.

If you want that to happen, Bond has to get off the shot.

That's why I made him disappear from the beginning.

Without 007, the weight of the action falls on agent 003, the French-Algerian Joanna Harwood, Bond's former lover;

agent 004, Josep Dryden, black, gay and with a disability (he is deaf in one ear), and 009, Sid Bashir, Harwood's ex-boyfriend, of a Sudanese father and a Pakistani mother and gripped by guilt because he shared a mission with Bond when they vanished in the same Barcelona where Don Quixote went to die.

Ian Fleming at his Jamaican mansion, which he christened 'Goldeneye.' HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES)

Both for the variety of profiles of the new heroes and for the idea of ​​expanding the Bond universe, the novel seems like an instruction book for new movies (or series).

When Amazon acquired MGM, and with it 50% of the rights to adapt the character, there was already speculation about a plan to squeeze the franchise based on series and

in parallel to the main films of the same, in the manner of what Disney has done with

, but the Broccoli family, owner of the other 50% and who have the last word on everything concerning the character's audiovisual adventures, have already made it clear that they are not up for the job.

Whether the new trilogy of books is a first step on the part of Ian Fleming Publications, holder of the literary rights, to convince the Broccoli of the benefits of this expansion of the battlefield, or not, is an enigma that Sherwood does not reveal.

"I wouldn't know what to say on the subject of movies, but it was a challenge as a writer," she settles.

"The bet was to make the story much more inclusive and hopefully make it easier for many more people to identify as the hero of the novel while keeping James Bond as James Bond, without changing the character."

Explained by Sherwood, the inclusive feast, sounds more like a realistic turn than an agenda

intoxication .

“The first thing I did is see how MI6 is recruiting agents.

There is a page on their website where the requirements to work there are specified and it asks something like: Do you know many languages?

You like to travel?

Do you have a gray ethic?

Well, maybe you can spy.

And they're looking for all kinds of profiles and experiences, because if all your spies are the same, white, Eton-educated straight men, that makes it hard to put them undercover and limits the number of missions they can be sent on."

That, in addition to the disappearance of Bond, the other

of the novel being an invention sponsored by a billionaire philanthropist to reverse climate change also fits the current sociopolitical agenda like a glove.

But the author is clear that she is following a tradition established by Fleming.

“He wrote about the major concerns of his time, like communism or the nuclear threat, but also about social issues, like the civil rights movement.

And today one of the biggest concerns is the climate crisis.

There is a growing imbalance and injustice, because there are those who are already suffering the effects to a great extent and a minority that can change things but does not because they are clearly benefiting from the situation.

That crisis was the ideal place to situate the villain.

Sherwood speaks knowingly.

After the impact of Pierce Brosnan's Bond on TV, at the age of 12 he discovered books.

And he never disengaged.

"I bought

in a second-hand bookstore and I completely fell in love with Fleming's writing, the style, the suspense…”.

Sherwood poses at the Villa Real hotel in Madrid. Andrea Comas

That early fascination allowed him to jump from a first novel,

, inspired by the lives of his grandparents, to a super-secret agent

.

“There was already some reference to Bond in

I have always told everyone who knows me that I wanted to write a James Bond novel.

Basically, I have been asking the universe for years for this opportunity and it has been granted.

When my agent learned that the Fleming family was looking for a new writer, he immediately contacted them.

I wrote them a letter with my ideas.

It's very important to them that whoever carries on Ian Fleming's legacy is passionate about what he created, and I had a project I did for language class when I was 13 or 14, about one of his novels, so I photocopied that assignment and I sent it to the family.

This is a dream come true."

Sherwood considered it important to "honor Fleming's vision, which does not disappear but is updated."

For the author, the question is why Bond, created 70 years ago, in a world very different from today, "is as it is in this century."

She has an answer, of course: “He is saddled with an enormous amount of losses.

His parents die when he was little, he loses Vesper, his first love;

he loses his wife, murdered after the wedding... he carries with him a quantity of mourning that makes all his relationships, if we can call them that, with other people brief, for he no longer knows involves ”.

In the book we only see Bond through the eyes, and the memories, of those who have known him.

“That allows us to see different versions of what they thought of him.

Each character facilitates a piece in the puzzle that is Bond”.

A puzzle and a myth, which increases with that absence that, between fights, persecutions and sharp dialogues, soaks all the pages of the book.

In one of them, one of the bad guys says that the power of the United Kingdom is based on myths: that of the empire, that of Churchill, that of Scotland Yard and Sherlock Holmes, that of James Bond.

“Myths are forged with heroic deeds and heroic people.

Or maybe they have always just been fantasies, ”he reflects, and then concludes about 007:“ That man is a fantasy.

The cars, the women, the gadgets, the resistance, the courage, the man who stands firm and does not waver.

The metafictional idea of ​​the hero turned into a myth, and of the myth put to the test, is drawn by Sherwood from

, that first literary encounter of his with Bond, in which there is a plot to destroy the image of the hero and, with it, that of the UK.

“It is about testing the solidity of the Bond myth, which is a symbol that is evolving, like his country and like the world.

And he always comes out with flying colors ”.

Sherwood also reserves a small tribute to the first woman to write about 007, Johanna Harwood, who, almost six decades before Phoebe Waller-Bridge was involved in writing the script for the last Bond film, No Time to Die, was a co-writer

the two first,

(1962) and

(1963), and to which he asked permission to give his name and surname to his agent 003.

“If those women had not been pioneers in the creative industries, women in my generation would not be able to do what we are doing.”

He's not the only new spy with a borrowed name.

Agent 009 shares a last name with Dr. Julian Bashir, one of the protagonists of

, one of the nineties

of the legendary Gene Roddenberry series.

Sherwood has converted a spy saga with a single protagonist into a much more choral story, and uses television series like

or

as models: "They are stories in which any character can be the protagonist in a chapter determined and then leave the main focus to another, because they are all interesting”, which is what she intends to do with the trilogy of books that she has been commissioned for the moment.

009, in fact, is the only character for which the writer imagines an actor, Alexander Siddig.

"But the one from the nineties, he's too old for the role now," she points out.

That is, when she embodied, precisely, Dr. Bashir.

For the others, facing an eventual jump to the screen, he does not get wet.

Nor for Craig's replacement.

“After Pierce Brosnan, I couldn't imagine another Bond.

When Daniel was cast, there was a lot of criticism.

And now we're still grieving for him and I don't see another.

Looking for him is Barbara's [Broccoli] job and I'm so glad he's not mine.”

Alexander Siddig, the actor that the author imagines as 009 in the role of Doran Martell in 'Game of Thrones'.

Nor does it enter into the latest controversy related to Bond, and with his heirs, who are the ones who have hired her.

The interview comes before the

reports that the Fleming estate will reissue the Bond books with alterations to the original text to remove racial references that, in the publisher's words, "today's readers might find offensive."

Contacted by email, Sherwood limits herself to referring to the statement with which the publisher justifies her decision.

She does assure in the interview that they have given her "a lot of confidence, an enormous amount of support and absolute freedom", and that the only conditions were that she introduce new super-agents and that the story be contemporary.

She is starting work on the third book and the second is already written and in the review and editing phase.

“It's a very interesting process,” she explains.

"It involves all the members of the Fleming family and multiple publishers in different countries, so I imagine it as one of those scenes in a Bond movie where there are a lot of people reading and giving their opinions at a very long table."

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