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The publication of El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo coincided with the death of Pope Francis. Before this, Javier Cercas (Spain) —an atheist, anti-clerical and militant secularist— travelled to Mongolia with him: “a madman without God following God’s fool to the end of the world”. With unprecedented access, he has written a novel without the fiction, a spiritual thriller. This is Cercas at his most personal, one that resonates with successes such as The Impostor and The Anatomy of a Moment.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

After the ceasifre agreement between Israel and Hamas, a new era has opened up for the people of Gaza: to build a peace amidst the rubble of war and barbarism, all in a context of the most powerful uncertainty. What the future will bring will be the subject of a discussion among journalist Catalina Gómez Ángel and Janne Teller, whose most recent novel, Justicia, is set against the backdrop of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. With the moderator José Manuel Acevedo.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

All that glitters in the world of artificial intelligence is not gold. The friendly side of the tools that in principle make our lives easier have an unknown dark side, as explained by Karen Hao ((USA), Chao Tayiana (Kenya) and Carissa Véliz (UK). It is not a matter of sounding the alarm, more a matter of bringing to light what we do not know about these new technologies: a massive and unprecedented consumption of energy resources, exploited workers in the global South, algorithmic manipulation, loss of privacy when we give over our data, and other problems that we, as users, are rarely aware of. They talk to Luhan Gabel.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Daniel Samper Pizano and Enrique Santos are two of the sharpest commentators and analysts of Colombian current affairs. Whether via the digital platform Los Danieles, columns, analysis or memoires, they have spent over four decades closely following the national political panorama — sometimes at first hand. Sometimes offering shared perspectives, at other times their views have been opposing. They are in the process of finishing a book that tells the story of both voices. With the provisional title of Memorias charladas, it will gather their journalistic memories, full of humor, anecdotes and reflections around the practice of the profession in Colombia. Accompanied on stage by María Jimena Duzán.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

How did one of the greatest film directors of his time come to be working for Joseph Goebbels? G. W. Pabst fled the rise of Nazism, taking refuge in Hollywood, where he was a failure. His mother’s illness brought him back to his native Austria, now under the yoke of the Third Reich, where the Nazis attempted to entice him into their propaganda apparatus. After captivating us with novels such as F and Tyll —shortlisted for the Booker Prize—, Daniel Kehlmann (Germany) tells the story of this director, who faced the moral and artistic dilemma of collaborating with the Nazi regime in exchange for saving himself and being able to continue making films. He talks to Philippe Sands.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Between fiction and non-fiction there is a fertile land where memory, truth and history mingle. Javier Cercas (Spain) and Leila Guerriero (Argentina) have made this space their field of exploration with novels that are living testimonies and chronicles bursting with narrative. In conversation with Mábel Lara (Colombia), they will talk about these three themes, constants in their work, and about how to pick which path when it comes to telling stories.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Table for Two, by Amor Towles (USA), includes six tales that take place around the year 2000, as well as a novella set during the Golden Age of Hollywood. There is apparently no connection among the stories, but they deal with universal themes, including the search for happiness, the power of money, and the subversion of social conventions. The author of the memorable A Gentleman in Moscow once again creates fascinating characters who talk about relationships, family, trust, ambition, guilt and the value of friendship. He talks to Santiago Ángel.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

About a quarter of a century ago, Zygmunt Bauman defined our time as one of “liquidity”. Since then, our structures have only continued to change, with a geopolitical spectrum that is more volatile than ever: the rise of autocratic politics, the invasion of Ukraine, the future of Gaza after the ceasefire, the US incursions in Colombian and Venezuelan waters… Talking about all this will be Fernando Arancón, Director of the digital media outlet El orden mundial; Marcela Meléndez, a World Bank economist; and Carlos Alberto Patiño, author of La Guerra Global Invisible. Ucrania, el mundo y el retorno de los imperios, together with journalist María Martín.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

With plays such as Art and God of Carnage, which have played in over 30 countries, Yasmina Reza (France) has created a position for herself as one of the most respected and interesting of contemporary playwrights. She is also an actor (Lejos, Hasta mañana…), filmmaker (Chicas), novelist (Babylone, Serge…) and screenwriter (Jusqu’à la nuit, la noche, Le pique-nique de Lulu Kreutz). In her latest book, Récits de certains faits, she brings together personal memories and trial reports in order to investigate moral fragility and everyday imperfection. A biting, psychological observation of the human, using concise and incisive texts.

Simultaneous interpretation from French to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

We pass on data every time we browse the Internet and use the social media, without concern for the value our privacy has. We feel we are making our everyday lives easier, but we are not aware of the power we are giving to private companies. Carissa Véliz is the author of Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data and The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance in which she talks of the practical and philosophical risks of losing our privacy in such a digital society. She will talk to the Fundación Gabo Projects Director Daniel Marquínez.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Annie Jacobsen (USA) was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with The Pentagon’s Brain, which was a detailed look into the US military and intelligence apparatus, a field that she has also dealt with in Area 51 and Operation Paperclip. Her latest book, Nuclear War: a Scenario, describes —using realistic events, actions and protocols— how exactly the nuclear war that would bring about the end of humanity might unfold. She will be in conversation with Michael Stott, Latin American editor of the Financial Times.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Justicia is Janne Teller’s first novel in eleven years. She is known around the world for works such as Nothing, and the Danish writer has needed two decades to complete this book, whose origins lie in a time when she worked as a UN diplomat. Set against the backdrop of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict —“the mother of all conflicts” according to the author—, she traces the complex relationship between a father, a UN representative, and his activist daughter, whose killing he must try to come to terms with. In conversation with Marianne Ponsford.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

The writer and political analyst León Valencia has created a work of fiction about friendship and love in La vida infausta del negro Apolinar. In this conversation, he will talk to Mábel Lara about a novel that tells the story of the protagonist’s last adventure. In it, Apolinar Mosquera, aged and infirm, asks an old friend to keep a promise: that he tell his story. So begins an exchange of letters that open up memories and revisit a shared pain whose wound was never healed.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

With El rugido de nuestro tiempo, the Colombian essayist Carlos Granés continues his work of understanding and analysing the present that he began in Salvajes de una nueva época. We live at a time of ideological and geopolitical disorder, in which we live surrounded by decolonial debates as well as pan-Hispanic nostalgias; this is a time of incendiary speeches and artists who sacrifice transgression in favour of the latest moral requirements. To understand all this roaring, there is nothing better than turning to Granés, who is also part of the “Otras historias del Archivo de Indias” project run by the Hay Festival and CAF, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Spanish city of Santa Marta.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.