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Event: Humour in contemporary Spanish fiction: Casariego and Zarraluki in conversation with Samantha Schnee
Date: 20th November, 7pm
Venue: London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Pl, London WC1A 2JL

Novelists Nicolás Casariego and Pedro Zarraluki will be speaking with Words without Borders founding editor Samantha Schnee in a conversation about the role of humour in contemporary Spanish fiction. They will be joined by their translators, Nick Caistor, Lorenza García and Thomas Bunstead.

ANTÓN MALLICK WANTS TO BE HAPPY, by Nicolás Casariego (translated by Thomas Bunstead)

After an unexpected incident triggers his first anguish attack in months, Antón is dead set on putting an end once and for all to his woeful days. Masterly woven into novel form by Nicolás Casariego, his journal—a miscellanea of narrative, reflection, and witty comments on famous self-help books and the works of great philosophers and renowned authors—will bear witness to his quest for happiness. An action-packed book with a refreshing tone, a sharp outlook, and, above all, plenty of humor.

 

THE HISTORY OF SILENCE, by Pedro Zarraluki (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García)

The two main charactes in the story, a writer and a publisher romantically involved, have a sudden and funny idea while driving through a deserted landscape: “Why not write a book about silence?” As the book grows, including stories of friends, questions (“why is silence awkward at a dinner with friends but not on top of a mountain ?”) quotations from philosophers and writers… the writer and the publisher stop talking to each other, as if they themselves became objects of their research. With the splendid gallery of characters that inhabit the novel, the author displays his implacable sense of humour and shows us to what extent life is a comedy under the constant threat of a tragic ending. Laughter, which we use to scare away silence, is the most elegant way of forgetting for a moment how close that danger is.

In partnership with Hispabooks Publishing and The London Review Bookshop