The BCNegra festival celebrates its coming of age by investigating the dark side of the human being

In each one inhabits the darkness of a shadow, sometimes hidden, although always on the lookout.

The multiplicity of which we are made is what the BCNegra festival intends to investigate this year, through the famous German concept of

(the ghostly double that accompanies us), so present in literary tradition.

For a week, from February 6 to 12, some 80 activities (not only literary) will return Barcelona to an imaginary

in continuous aesthetic and editorial expansion.

The meeting, which this edition reaches the age of majority with its 18th anniversary, will return with 125 participants.

Among them, national and international writers such as Dolores Redondo or the Argentine Claudia Piñeiro, winner in 2019 of the prestigious Pepe Carvalho award, in honor of the detective Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and which is awarded within the framework of the festival.

MORE INFORMATION

The complete program of the BCNegra 2023

It will be precisely the Carvalho award that will inaugurate this edition of the BCNegra (on the 6th, at 4:30 p.m.), unlike other years, in which it was announced in advance.

The award, which in 2022 distinguished Don Winslow, a benchmark in drug literature and crime novels, will be delivered as usual at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council by Piñeiro herself, who will also take part in other activities such as a round table on fractured societies and their expression in the noir genre (6, 7pm), together with the writer Lorenzo Silva.

The event will take place at El Molino del Paralelo (founded in 1898), one of the most transgressive venues in the Catalan capital and which will host a large part of the festival's activities.

📚The #bbcnMontbau Library, specialized in the black genre, has prepared a reading guide for written works for those invited to the language edition of the #BCNegra

ℹ️https://t.co/grp2X27mTn pic.twitter.com/pQoJb34exi

– BibliotequesBCN (@BibliotequesBCN) January 24, 2023

An hour later, the Albert Pla concert will also take place in this space, which will close the first day of a long program that this year seeks to transcend the margins of the genre, according to what the writer Carlos Zanón, curator of the meetings, during a press conference with the Barcelona City Councilor for Culture, Jordi Martí, in the curious workshop of the city's Wax Museum, all surrounded by heads being made, clay bodies and some statue of Frankenstein.

Among the writers who "are not normally seen at this festival" will be the Scotsman Graeme Macrae, an author who experiments with the detective genre;

or Ray Loriga, who has recently published

(Alfaguara), a novel about friendship and death marked by his recent health problems.

will be inaugurated at the Jaume Fuster Library

, an event in which Zanón himself and Joaquim Noguero will participate.

That same day, at El Molino, a play will be presented,

(7pm), written by the playwright Ada Castells, which will delve into the theme of the double life in a piece created specifically for the festival.

An hour later, at the Filmoteca de Catalunya,

will be screened (8pm), based on a novel by Cuban Leonardo Padura, who participated in the creation of the script and will present the

.

The round tables, the cinema and theatrical performances, as well as literary tours and open reading club sessions (where crime novels are widely successful) will last until the end of the festival, on Sunday, February 12, with all the activities free (except in the Filmoteca).

the double

noir

Continuing with the tradition of these meetings, the black week will highlight an author, a character and a book.

The Italian Leonardo Sciascia, "who renewed the crime novel from a political point of view", in the words of Zanón, is the chosen author.

John Blacksad, a detective cat created in the year 2000 by screenwriter Juan Díaz Canales and cartoonist Juanjo Guarnido, is the character;

which also contributes to expanding the margins of the festival towards comic codes.

The book, fundamental to the theme of the double, will be

, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Along these lines, BCNegra will once again collaborate for the second consecutive year with the Filmin platform, which will create two categories dedicated to the genre, as well as to the figure of the

.

You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on