Gaspard Koenig: “Worms are our passport to continued survival.”

When the philosopher and writer Gaspard Koenig (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 1982) began to plan his new novel, he had one thing clear: “I wanted to focus on two young people who have great ideals but who, as the years go by, realize how difficult it is to fulfill them and come face to face with reality,” he confessed to La Vanguardia .

These ideals are related to climate change. "What else could they be more concerned about? Housing, it's true, but unfortunately, they take that problem for granted. With the planet, on the other hand, many convince themselves that they have one last chance to save it and that it's up to them to do it, given that the older generation seems to have given up."

Worms break down dead organisms to give rise to new life forms.

The protagonists of his new story, Humus (Seix Barral), are Kevin and Arthur, two agronomy students who, while not activists, share that same generational fixation, to which they add a new one: earthworms, beings that, in Koenig's opinion, "are extremely underestimated because, without them, none of us would exist. We are also facing a biodiversity crisis, which is rooted precisely in the soil, as that's where most life develops. And earthworms are the farmers of the earth. They decompose dead organisms so that new forms of life can emerge."

Using these invertebrates, Arthur and Kevin aim to change the world, but in very different ways. The former opts to regenerate a family plot of land ruined by pesticides; while the latter attempts to do so with a startup that will make him the hottest newcomer of green capitalism, despite his business not being as ethical as it promises.

"One rises and the other falls to the margins, but both, in one way or another, face disappointment. I was interested in seeing how they reacted," says the author, who spent a few days in Barcelona to offer more details about this plot, in which he makes no secret of the fact that he has captured his eco-anxiety.

He could have done it with an essay, as he's studied a great deal of knowledge over the nearly two decades he's been working on this story. However, he opted for narrative. "I felt freer presenting all this in a novel than in an essay. I don't have a definitive opinion on certain topics. So, through my characters, I refrain from judging."

I felt freer to address certain topics on which I don't have a definitive opinion with a novel than with an essay."

The writer doesn't hide the fact that for part of his story, he found inspiration in Theranos, "a company run by Elizabeth Holmes that operated in Silicon Valley and claimed to produce blood tests from a single drop of blood, suggesting it would transform the industry. Its technology didn't advance as expected, and they made up for it with all kinds of lies. Private equity capitalism involves faking it until you achieve your goals, if you ever achieve them."

Be that as it may, this book—which since its publication has won the Interallié, Transfuge, and Jean Giono prizes, and has been a finalist for the Goncourt and Renaudot awards—leaves several questions unanswered. “One of the main ones, and one I haven't found an answer to, is whether or not capitalism is capable of engaging with environmentalism. I'd love to offer an affirmative answer, but I'm not sure.”

What he does seem to be more aware of is the need to generate interest in species that live in the ground, of which "we only know one percent. In a spoonful of soil, we have 10 billion years of experience, an incredible universe we have no idea about, and which could be our passport to continued survival."