Passa porta seminar
FIRST EDITION 10 TO 12 MARCH 2014
International Writers’ Seminar with Céline Curiol (FRA), Joke Hermsen (NLD), Iman Humaydan (LIB), Jens Christian Grøndahl (DNK), Anne Provoost (BEL), Goce Smilevski (MKD) and Juan Gabriel Vásquez (COL). Moderated by Ortwin De Graef (BEL).
Public presentation on Wednesday 12 March at Flagey, 8.15 pm. More info and booking
Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia, 1973) is one of the key figures in a new generation of Latin American writers. Mario Vargas Llosa described him as ‘one of the most original new voices in the region’. After completing his studies in Colombia he went to Paris where he acquired a PhD in Latin American literature at the Sorbonne. He then lived in the Belgian Ardennes for a time before settling in Barcelona. After living abroad for sixteen years, he returned to Colombia in 2013. He writes regularly for magazines and newspapers and has a weekly column in the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. In his novels, he often returns to dark periods in Colombian history, in which corruption, violence and opportunism are rampant. In The Informers (2004) he writes about the harsh treatment the Germans received in Colombia during WWII and inThe Secret History of Costaguana (2007) about the construction of the Panama Canal and the bloodshed that accompanied it. In his most recent novel, The Sound of Things Falling(2011, Premio Alfaguara), he looks back, in a language that is beautifully atmospheric, at the rise and success of the Colombian drug trade in the seventies and eighties and the impact drug terrorism has had on his generation. Lately, The Sound of Things Falling has also been awarded the Prix Roger Caillois (2012) and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori-Città di Firenze (2013).
http://www.passaporta.be/en/passa-porta-lab/passa-porta-seminar