There are more than 10,000 kilometers between Guadalajara, Mexico, and kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Almost 13,000 to the Gaza Strip. But in the most important Spanish-speaking literary event in the world, which begins this Saturday, the two wars have become the backdrop. This year, the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) has the European Union as its guest of honor, bringing a large contingent of authors from the 27 countries in the region. In its program, made up of more than 1,000 activities over nine days, there are plenty of tables and meetings focused on diversity and resistance. As its director, Marisol Schulz, explained to EL PAÍS, the FIL is “a space of freedom,” which can “unite people from countries that in another sense could be enemies through literature and culture.”
The fair opens this Saturday morning with the presentation of the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages to Coral Bracho, the first Mexican poet to win one of the most important international literary awards, which last year went to the writer Romanian Mircea Cărtărescu. The jury awards her because her poetry “asks about the ways in which the world is discovered and named: her work then becomes an archive of vital experiences where oblivion, illness, pain and death are thought about.” ”.
A couple of hours later, the pavilion of this year’s guest of honor premieres with the young orchestra of the European Union, which brings 70 authors, among whom are the Portuguese Lídia Jorge, the French Pascal Quignard, the Romanian Tatiana Țibuleac, the German María Cecilia Barbetta, the Irish Colm Tóibín, the Hungarian András Forgách or the Slovak Mária Ferenčuhová. The landing of the EU in Guadalajara was something that the FIL had been seeking for a long time, explained Schulz, who considers that “the linguistic diversity, the cultural diversity and the generational diversity of contemporary Europe” is a “great unknown” for Mexico: “It is a great opportunity for the public that is going to visit the fair.”
The talk that opens this pavilion will be dedicated to Ukraine, a country that is not part of the EU, but which is also represented by two writers, Andrei Kurchóv and Haska Shyyan. The “Hold on Ukraine” initiative, with author Héctor Abad Faciolince—who lost his colleague, the 37-year-old writer Victoria Amelina, after a Russian bombing in Kramatorsk—will be the first in a series of meetings on literature under the shadow of war. “Writers for democracy and civil rights”, “How to write and read in violent times”, “Words as an instrument of tolerance and openness” or “How to write and read from the margins” will be some of the tables until the 3rd from December.
From Spain, which will be the guest of honor for the 2024 FIL, arrive Antonio Muñoz Molina and Elvira Lindo, the best-seller Elísabet Benavent, María Dueñas and Eloy Moreno, Lorenzo Silva and Jordi Sierra i Fabra, as well as one of the most anticipated authors among young people, Joana Marcús. The Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez, exiled in Madrid by the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo, has been in charge of the Government of coordinating the Spanish program. The author participates in a talk with EL PAÍS about exile, censorship and oppression in Central America.
This event is also a show of strength in Mexican literature. In addition to established authors such as Cristina Rivera Garza, Paco Taibo, Brenda Navarro, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Juan Villoro, Guillermo Arriaga, Guadalupe Nettel, Alma Delia Murillo or the linguist Concepción Company, the FIL also brings to the ring the talent of young authors from various states of Mexico, such as that of the poet Elisa Díaz Castelo, Clyo Mendoza, Alaíde Ventura, Alejandro von Düben, Natalia Trigo or Habacuc Antonio de Rosario.
Colombian María Ospina, winner of the 2023 Sor Juana award, also arrives in Guadalajara with a prominent space for her novel Just a little here. In addition, other Latin American authors such as the Chilean Alejandro Zambra, the Colombian Piedad Bonnett, the Argentinian Patricio Pron, Agustina Bazterrica and Andrés Neuman, or the Peruvian Enrique Planas.
The FIL is a fair with many fairs within it. In more than 43,000 square meters of exhibition there is a literary universe with 450,000 books from 2,200 publishers, where 650 writers from 45 different countries – who write in 33 different languages - come to present their works and also 300 figures from science, culture , journalism or justice. For this year, it is expected to forget the pandemic once and for all and exceed more than 800,000 visitors. This will be the first year of the fair without its founder, Raúl Padilla, who devised and controlled this event that does not have federal financial support.
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