Liliana Colanzi and Eduardo Halfón talk to Ángel Gurría-Quintana

Bolivian writer Liliana Colanzi and Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfón discuss the ideas of collapse, language, kinship and memory that show up in both of their works, with literary journalist and translator Ángel Gurría-Quintana.

Colanzi’s short stories (You Glow in the Dark, Our Dead World) build eerie dystopian landscapes out of the decimated ruins of post-nuclear Latin America, in a style that feels both very real and completely otherworldly. Guatemalan writer Halfón’s Tarantula explores the traumatic childhood episode of two brothers in an immersive Jewish camp that ends up turning into a militarised nightmare. Halfón was named one of the 39 most promising young Latin American writers by Hay Festival in Bogotá.