A Book to Call Home with Agustina Bazterrica

Chris Keulemans interviewed Agustina Bazterrica about the book that brought her home.

Information

Date and time Thursday 16 June 2022 22:45 tot 23:05 uur
Location Paard Café
Price 29,50
15,- (CJP, Students, Ooievaarspas)

A Book to Call Home - Chris Keulemans interviewed Agustina Bazterrica

Following up on the festival theme Whose House is This?, in A Book to Come Home to we asked one festival author the following question: which book brought you home? The answers could go in all directions. Perhaps the author chose a book that describes a house that feels like his/her own home, or a place where he/she wishes to live. But it could also be a book whose style of writing or manner of thinking makes the author feel at home. Or it could be the relief of finally reading a story in which the protagonist reflects his/her appearance. The program was a peek into the bookshelves as well as the soul of each author.

Agustina Bazterrica

(Argentina, 1974) won the important Premio Clarín Novela in 2017 for her second novel, Cadáver Exquisito (translated into English as Tender Is the Flesh). The jury unanimously chose her book from 494 submitted manuscripts. It's a dystopian novel about Marcos Tejo, manager of a large meat-processing plant at a time when animal flesh is unfit for consumption because of a virus. He's one of few people who can recall that meat once came from cows, pigs and poultry. Marcos grieves for his dead son and the departure of his wife, cares for his sick father and is almost on a war footing with his sister. The day comes when he receives a living gift from a meat supplier. Tender Is the Flesh is about grief and dehumanization and offers surprisingly credible and gruesome solutions to pressing global problems. Bazterrica's novel paints a mercilessly critical and chilling picture of a morally bankrupt society.


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Chris Keulemans

(Tunisia, 1960) is a writer, essayist, traveller and popular panel moderator. He has published fiction and non-fiction; was the director of the debating platform and venue De Balie; and was founder of the literary bookshop Perdu and the cultural centre De Tolhuistuin (all in Amsterdam). He performed with Enkidu Khaled in their jointly created documentary play Bagdad. Due to his curiosity about how artists recreate their cities after a crisis, he travelled to Sarajevo, Beirut, Tirana, Algiers, New York, Kiev, Jakarta and Qamishlo. At the invitation of PAX, he wrote Srebrenica & PAX 1995-2020, an overview of 25 years of support to the Association of Women of Srebrenica by the IKV and PAX in response to the genocide in Bosnia. In 2021 he published Gastvrijheid (Hospitality), in which he explores the art of hospitality through a mix of travel stories, observations, memories and imagery.
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