The Buenos Aires Book Fair, one of the most attractive cultural events in Latin America with an average of one million visitors per edition, returns after a two-year break due to the pandemic.
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who has recovered after a brief hospitalization due to COVID, is the guest star of an exhibition that has been challenged to encourage the purchase of books in the context of inflation that has pushed up their prices.
The 46th edition of the Buenos Aires International Book Fair (FIL) will officially open on Thursday with a speech by local writer Guillermo Saccomanno and will run until May 16 at the Rural Society’s vast compound.
Vargas Llosa, 86, will present his latest book The Silent Gaze, an essay dedicated to Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, who has been writing during the two years the pandemic has been going on. Beyond literature, the Peruvian author also arouses expectations in his reflections on politics.
The presence of the Nobel Prize in Literature in Buenos Aires has been questioned after contracting COVID. Last week he was hospitalized but discharged and his trip confirmed.
In addition to the author of “La fiesta del chivo”, the Spaniards Javier Cercas, Irene Solá, Jorge Carrión and Marta Sanz will also take part; the American John Katzenbach; Chile’s Diamela Eltit, Alejandra Costamagna and Paulina Flores; among others, the French Caroline Fourest, the Colombian Carolina Sanín and the Brazilian Camila do Valle.
Guest of honor is Havana with its music and the avant-garde of its literature.
For the first time, an open-air firmodrome will function, with authors signing copies of their books to avoid crowds when COVID is still a risk.
But the fair does not end in the presence of writers. Unlike other similar events focused on the publishing business, Buenos Aires also invites political and cultural debates, honors famous authors who have died (Almudena Grandes, José Saramago and Gabriel García Márquez just 40 years after receiving their Nobel Prize in Literature) and organizes the first international meeting of “bookfluencers” who create content about books on social networks.
“Both (the fairs in) Guadalajara and Frankfurt are very focused on selling books; they are business fairs, get a translator for the works. Buenos Aires is unique because of its duration and it has so much movement because the program is crazy. Every day there’s activity from the start, there’s all the voices,” poet Juan Fernando García, curator of a space at the fair called “Pride and Prejudice” dedicated to the theme of sexual diversity, feminism, told AP. .and transfeminism.
The reopening of the FIL in Buenos Aires comes at a difficult time for the local publishing industry. After a historic slump in book production due to lockdown in 2020, she is now facing the impact of inflation, which has pushed up costs, particularly of paper. The book, in turn, is not a priority consumer good for families with little purchasing power.
“Some books have increased by 450% since 2019,” said Humberto Cipolletta, owner of the Raíces bookstore, which has been selling books on social psychology, philosophy and Marxist authors at the fair for 36 years. “It’s a time of great uncertainty but I can’t afford not to post my ideas in a place like this, I want people to read them.”
Argentina is one of the countries with the highest inflation in the world. In 2021 it was 50.9% and this year it will be 16.1%.
“The cost of the newspaper went to hell,” said Daphne Pidemunt, owner of independent publishing house La Mariposa y la Iguana, devoted to sexual diversity and poetry. “I’m already satisfied that I’m done and that I won’t get lost at the trade fair.”