Hay Festival Cartagena 2026

There is a Caribbean beyond the postcards, beyond the beautiful beaches bathed in sun. This is a region with a colonial history, whose exiles speak, just as those who have remained do. It is a region that is open to new arrivals, but private behind closed doors. Bajo otras luces is the Caribbean as seen by the Dominican Frank Báez: an essay about what it means to write there, and how it is seen from far off. The personal view of an essayist, a poet and a Caribbean.

With Morir en la arena Leonardo Padura returns with another masterful description of his native Cuba. He is the chronicler of a lost generation, one that has endured half a century of difficulties, and in his book Havana becomes another character, a witness to the passage of time and wasted promises. Rodolfo, marked by the patricide committed by his brother and reminders of the war in Angola, has recently retired, and intimacy with his sister-in-law, an old love, begins. With his brother, terminally ill, leaving prison and returning home, echoes of the past, long buried, haunt the present.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez will talk about his most recent book, Los nombres de Feliza, a recreation of the life of the sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, who was a freethinking artist who went beyond the limits set by the times for women like her. This rigorous novel weaves together art, history and memoir. He will talk to Juan Manuel Ruiz and Alexandra Vives.