A screen can attract many people if the person appearing is Salman Rushdie (Mumbai, 1947). If he also talks about Gabriel García Márquez, the expectation is greater. “He didn't want this to be published. He wrote it while suffering from dementia and I'm worried about it hitting bookstores. I say from now on that at the University of Austin I have some somewhat overwhelming manuscripts that I do not want to be disseminated,” he stated, in reference to the novel See You in August.
From his home library, the author of The Satanic Verses has been one of the authors in charge of inaugurating this Wednesday the twelfth edition of the Kosmopolis festival, which will be held until next Sunday in the different spaces of the Center de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona ( CCCB).
“How is your shitty year going?” writer Lisa Appignanesi (Lódź, 1946) also broke the ice in reference to the attack she suffered during a conference she was giving in the United States and in which she lost her right eye. “I have fully recovered.” The audience then broke the sepulchral silence that reigned until that moment to applaud and let out a few whistles.
“It's not every day that you get to hear him speak live, even online,” student Arnau González enthusiastically expressed to La Vanguardia, who found a free spot in the front row. A stroke of luck considering how quickly the hall filled up. Throughout the presentation, at least two people have sneakily approached the screen, probably with the intention of feeling it close. They would not have been able to do it if the writer had attended in person, since no one can come closer than four meters for security reasons.
From everything bad, Rushdie has always known how to get something positive: productivity. He did it after the late leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for his death by publishing a memoir under the pseudonym Joseph Anton and he is doing it again now with Cuchillo, which will be released in April and which narrates the tragic experience he lived in August of last year.
“I hope to be able to return to fiction soon. I never thought I would write autobiographies because they didn't interest me in the least, but life circumstances deserved it. This will be about 200 pages and is written in the first person. “When they stick a knife in your neck you acquire that right,” he said.
Tsitsi Dangarembga (Mutoko, 1959) was the other protagonist of the afternoon. The writer and filmmaker, recognized for being a reference for feminism in Africa and, like Rushdie, a defender of freedom of expression, received the Veu Lliure 2023 award from PEN Català. In her speech, and during a conversation with journalist David Guzmán, the author of Nervous Conditions has emphasized the importance of literature to make visible the inequalities and oppressions “that still affect us today.”
The most praised question came from a girl. "Why you writing?". The author from Zimbabwe answered firmly: “Because when she was reading she couldn't find anyone like me and I understood that we had to take a step forward.”
