Rodrigo Hasbún
(Cochabamba, 1981) is a Bolivian writer considered a major talent in Latin American literature. Hasbun's international breakthrough came in 2015 with his second novel Los afectos, which won him a PEN Award. In 2016 the novel appeared in Dutch translation with the title Woeste jaren (Savage Years). It's a gripping story partly based on fact about an eccentric nazi family living in Bolivia in the fifties and sixties. Before he started writing, Hasbun was a guitarist in a grunge band; he says that music taught him the importance of rhythm to a good book. He debuted in 2006 with the story collection Cinco, an immediate smash success. One of its stories was made into a film and another reworked for the theatre.
Past events
Ideology as an Act of Fiction
Writers are more likely to take up the pen than the sword in order to fight injustice. Fiction becomes their ideological act.
My Secret City
The festival asked seven authors to write about their own "secret" cities. Not the city that they see when they walk out the door but the city that they occasionally and unexpectedly come across. They read in their own language, with English and Dutch translations projected simultaneously.
This Is Not America (part 1)
A late-night show about the United States of America that touches on many issues, from the shrinking middle class to the differences between whites and blacks, from hopeful new immigrants to the embittered white underclass. The America of the supporters of President Trump.
