Jornada de literatura argentina
22. October 2019
The fourth workshop on contemporary Argentine literature, with around sixty participants the best-attended to date, brought together writers who live and work outside their country. In his introductory lecture the Director of Culture in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sergio Baur showed that this was already true for leading authors of the avant-garde, in particular for Borges, who grew up in Switzerland and received important impulses in Spain. Afterwards, five Argentine writers read from current works written in the USA or Europe and answered the questions of the audience. The New York-based poet María Negroni presented her long poem Exilium; Eduardo Berti from Bordeaux his new novel Faster; Mariana Eva Pérez her much-discussed Diario de una princesa montonera, a book emerged from a Constance blog. María Cecilia Barbetta, a Berliner by choice, read from her novel Nachtleuchten, written in German, and Patricio Pron, who lives in Madrid, performed a satire about the trials and tribulations of a literary prizewinner who traverses the entire Spanish-speaking world. Although Mónica Müller had come from Buenos Aires, she presented her autobiographical work Mi papá alemán where she looks back on the German homeland of her father. The event ended with a reception by Nazareno Muñoz, the new Consul General of the Republic of Argentina in Bonn.