Attendees at the 44th International Book Fair of Buenos Aires in 2019.David Fernández
The capital of Argentina returns to celebrate its great book festival after two years of absence.
This Thursday the doors of the Buenos Aires International Book Fair (FIL) will reopen to inaugurate its 46th edition, which will last until May 16.
With Havana as the guest city and the writer Guillermo Saccomanno in charge of the opening speech, the most important literary event in Argentina is preparing to attract thousands of readers and try to revive a sector hit hard by the economic crisis and the pandemic.
In its last edition, held in 2019, it had more than a million visitors.
The covid-19, which forced the in-person Fair to be suspended in 2020 and 2021, gave the organizers a last-minute scare: the main international star, the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, was hospitalized last week after contracting the virus , but he has already been discharged and his trip to Buenos Aires has been confirmed.
At the FIL he will present
The Still Gaze
, an essay on Benito Pérez Galdós.
In addition to Vargas Llosa, international guests include the Spanish Javier Cercas, Marta Sanz and Irene Solá;
the American John Katzenbach;
the Chileans Diamela Eltit and Alejandra Costamagna;
the Peruvians Katya Adaui and Diego Trelles Paz;
the Colombian Carolina Sanín and the Brazilian Camila do Valle.
A 'firmodrome'
In this edition, journalist Ezequiel Martínez makes his debut as general director, predicting an “unforgettable” FIL with nearly 1,500 scheduled activities and some novelties.
Among the latter is the installation of a
firmodrome
, to which readers who want to take an autograph —or a
selfie—
with their favorite authors should go.
The Fair will also pay tribute to some authors who have died in the last two years.
The most emblematic is the cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, Quino, who died in September 2020. In the first edition without the creator of Mafalda, Ediciones La Flor dedicates its
stand
to him and organizes an exhibition in his memory.
The Spanish Almudena Grandes, who died on November 27, at the age of 61, will also be remembered.
The poet and director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, will participate in an act of homage to the author of
The Frozen Heart
, who was his partner for two decades.
This 2022 also marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Manuel Puig and among the planned events there is a
performance
by the artist Flavia Da Rin.
In the editorial production, the numerous novelties around the Malvinas war stand out, which this year marked the 40th anniversary.
The journalist Felipe Celesia signs the investigation
Disembarco en las Georgias.
The truth about the mysterious incident that sparked the war over the Malvinas Islands
(Paidós) and her colleague Agustina López brings together testimonies from war veterans from both countries and relatives in
Darwin, a story from Malvinas
(Galerna).
In
Listening to Malvinas
(Gourmet Musical), Esteban Buch and Abel Gilbert compile texts on the music that accompanied society during and after the war.
The war also continues to fuel fiction, as in the phantasmagorical
Sheep
, the novel by Sebastián Ávila, winner of the latest Futurock award.
The Critics Award, with which the El Libro Foundation recognizes the best Argentine book of literary creation, will consecrate three authors: the one from 2019 (which should have been delivered in 2020), the one from 2020 and 2021.
Before opening to the general public, the Book Fair welcomed the publishing industry on Tuesday with professional conferences, in which about 7,000 people participated, including publishers, booksellers, distributors, translators and literary agents.
These three-day sessions seek to revitalize the Argentine publishing industry, in decline for five years.
According to the latest report from the Argentine Book Chamber, editorial production fell by 30% in 2020 compared to the previous year and has accumulated a drop of 60 percentage points since 2016. The average circulation in that year was 2,700 copies, while in 2020 had dropped to 1,600.
Despite the unfavorable economic context, the FIL is committed to celebrating the reunion with the public in one of the most read cities in Latin America.
"We want it to be the big comeback, the big party," says Ezequiel Martínez.
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