The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), which featured 650 authors from 44 countries, ended its nine-day run on December 2. To commemorate the 30th edition of FIL, the guest of honor was not a country but all of Latin America. The fair’s incredibly diverse literary program included the participation of 20 Spanish-speaking countries, including some with very small publishing industries, such as the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.
One of the fair’s highlights was a series of panels titled Ochenteros. The Ochenteros panels featured 20 authors from across Latin America who were born in the 1980s. These new voices presented the reality of a new Latin America to attendees. They spoke of a region that has evolved, that has become much more outward looking and less insular than it was in the 1960s, but that in some ways remains loyal to its roots even while embracing globalization. Among the writers who took part in the series were Pedro J. Acuña of Mexico, Camila Fabbri of Argentina, Francisco Ovando of Chile, and Marcela Ribadeneira of Ecuador.
Vargas Llosa Opens FIL, Reflects on the Boom
Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate in literature and a guest of honor at FIL, opened the fair’s Literary Program of Latin America with a lecture on the region’s literature and the end of the Latin American boom. The boom was a period in the 1960s and ’70s when Latin American literature flourished and the region produced some of the world’s best known writers. In addition to Vargas Llosa, those authors included Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez.
In his lecture Vargas Llosa, born in Peru, said that one of the boom’s merits was the transnational diffusion of works by Latin American authors that it achieved. Prior to the boom, Latin American authors were read only within Latin America; their work was not available in Europe or America. Proud to be part of the boom, Vargas Llosa described that period as a time when good novels emerged that helped break down the barriers between individual countries within Latin America, while exposing the region’s readers to other authors who wrote in Spanish. As the only living major writer of the boom, Vargas Llosa closed his speech with an epitaph to the period: “I think I have the sad privilege of turning off the light and closing the door.”
Vargas Llosa sees the experience of FIL as uplifting, especially for those who wonder about the future of literature and the future of books. In his lecture, he described literature as an important contributor to progress—to improving human relations and to diminishing violence— in addition to being an extraordinary entertainment. He said that a well-written novel presents readers with a better world than the one we live in.
Manea Takes Romance Languages Prize
As part of the fair’s literary program, the 2016 FIL Literature Prize in Romance Languages was presented to Romanian author Norman Manea. During his acceptance speech, Manea recounted that after World War II, many survivors of concentration camps migrated to other countries, a situation similar to what is happening today, as refugees from the Syrian Civil War and other conflicts in the Middle East attempt to relocate to Europe and America. “It is very sad and disturbing to see what happens in many countries, where people die for who they are,” Manea said. “Where possible we should use our voice to defend these people. We have to make our voice heard.”
