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Carlos Enrique Freyre and Enmanuel Grau in conversation with Paola Donaire

South to North Conversations: violences

Arequipa 2025, Sunday 9 November 2025

Violence is an oozing sore in the literature of Carlos Enrique Freyre and Enmanuel Grau, and is a constant feature of their recent work. The Peruvian writer and soldier writes about violence through the link between the conquistadors and their dogs, as well as the nature of power; in Tierra de canes he takes us back to the days of Tomás de Xérez, who became an aperreador —those who used dogs of war to defeat the indigenous people— as part of his service in the conquest of the New World. If El fin del mundo could speak, it would cry out with the pain of the protagonists of its stories: a poet tortured by the police, a young man who flees from repression in Bagua, two former soldiers who evoke the excesses committed… together with Paola Donaire they will talk about the brutality related in their books.