Hay Festival Arequipa 2021 – Literature

The Peruvian writer Gustavo Rodríguez presents Cien cuyes, winner of the prestigious Alfaguara Novel Prize in 2023. This is a story in which Rodríguez brilliantly combines comedy and tragedy to examine one of our society’s most sensitive issues: aging and the physical and mental deterioration it brings. This he does through the eyes of Eufrasia, a protagonist who goes from one end of the city of Lima to the other in order to look after elderly people who depend on her care, and to whom they entrust certain tasks that only she is willing to carry out. In conversation with Giovanni Barletti.

The Peruvian writer Gustavo Rodríguez presents Cien cuyes, winner of the prestigious Alfaguara Novel Prize in 2023. This is a story in which Gustavo Rodríguez brilliantly combines comedy and tragedy to examine one of our society’s most sensitive issues: aging and the physical and mental deterioration it brings. This he does through the eyes of Eufrasia, a protagonist who goes from one end of the city of Lima to the other in order to look after elderly people who depend on her care, and to whom they entrust certain tasks that only she is willing to carry out. In conversation with Patricia del Río.

The acclaimed author of the Trilogía de la casa de los conejos presents her latest novel, a moving story based on real events. For A través del bosque, Laura Alcoba (Argentina-France) investigated the infanticide committed in 1984 by an Argentinean woman exiled in France, taking us into the minds of the survivors of that tragedy more than 30 years afterwards. At this event, Alcoba will talk about the process of creating the novel and the ways in which literature can give meaning and closure to the incomprehensible. In conversation with Teresina Muñoz-Nájar.

Katharina Volckmer, in conversation with Valerie Miles, invites us into the world of The Appointment, a provocative and hilarious novel in which we follow the life of a young German woman living in London, and what happens when she consults the Jewish Dr Seligman.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

This event will be part of the South to South series, in which the Hay Festival offers a forum for some of the most innovative voices of the global South, in order to share different ways of seeing the world, as well as non-Western solutions to the problems that beset us. With the writer and journalist Lina Meruane (Chile), and the writer and activist Lola Shoneyin (Nigeria). They will talk to Jorge Bedregal La Vera.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Son of a Chilean novelist and a Venezuelan diplomat, Miguel Bonnefoy was born in Paris and grew up between France, Venezuela and Portugal. Although he decided to write in French, much of his work explores matters such as immigration, being disconnected from your roots, and the character and history of Venezuela. Based on his own experience, at this event Miguel Bonnefoy will talk about the influence of language on the perception of identity, and how a mixture of cultures can enrich one’s individuality. A unique opportunity to reflect on the relationship between language, culture and identity. In conversation with Ingrid Bejerman.

Guillermo Arriaga has won many prizes, including the Mazatlán, the Alfaguara, the Venice Golden Lion, and a Best Screenplay award at Cannes, and has also been a nominee at the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Baftas. At this event, the accomplished Mexican novelist and screenwriter will present his latest work of fiction, Extrañas, a bildungsroman set in 18th-century England, which plunges the reader into the world of early science and the Enlightenment’s struggle with religion, the irrational and the monstrous side of the human. In conversation with Clara Elvira Ospina.

Eley Williams is the author of The Liar’s Dictionary, a novel that in 2021 won a Betty Trask Award and which The Guardian newspaper included on its list of books of the year. In 2023, Williams was selected by the prestigious magazine Granta as one of the best young British novelists. She shares this honour with Carlos Yushimito (Peru), named in 2010 as one of the best young Spanish-language novelists by the same magazine. The author will present his book El peso inevitable de las palomas, with which he returns to the short fiction form that originally brought him to the attention of a wide public. In conversation with Valerie Miles.

This event is part of the Hay Festival and British Council’s Literary Pairs series; each pair will repeat their event at the Hay Festival in Wales in 2024.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

This writer, shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, Miguel Bonnefoy (Venezuela/France) returns with L’inventeur, a new novel that has something of the quixotic about it and which brings to life the figure of Augustin Mouchot. Practically unknown today, Mouchot was a mid-19th-century French inventor and pioneer in the use of solar energy, who managed to create a machine able to produce a block of ice using only the light of the sun. However, his extraordinary achievements were buried by the economic interests involved in the coal trade. In conversation with Orlando Mazeyra, the author will talk about this striking figure, whose inventions could have completely transformed the course of history as we know it.