Salman Rushdie’s life is slowly getting back on track. Since the attack he suffered in August of last year during a conference he was giving in the United States, the writer decided to remain in the shadows for a few months. A time that he has not wasted at all, as he has used it to write Ganivet, where he narrates this tragic experience. A few days ago he made an exception and showed up at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and on Wednesday, although online, he will inaugurate the literary festival Kosmopolis, which will run until October 29 and this edition has three thematic axes: freedom of expression, Morocco and oceanic literature.
The latter was the one that began to structure the entire program, as Juan Insua and Elisabet Goula, at the head of this literary event, and Judit Carrera, director of the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona, ??explained in a press conference yesterday (CCCB), the place where the activities will take place. Some questions encouraged them to let water take center stage, such as finding out what so captivated Herman Melville about the vast ocean to convince him that he had to shut himself up to write Moby Dick or Homer to face L’ Odyssey
“The sea has always been a source of literary and mythological inspiration and continues today to be the center of novels, poetry, essays, cinema and music”, recalled Carrera, after announcing some of the 97 participants who will be seen these five days in Barcelona, ??as is the case with the writers Rodrigo Fresán, Enrique Vila-Matas, Alana S. Portero, Sebastià Perelló or Llucia Ramis.
The festival will also have an international presence – a total of 23 names –, among which stand out Virginie Despentes, Deborah Levy, Jarvis Cocker and Jeanette Winterson, among others.
“The twelfth edition will take us from ancient odysseys to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene. Recovering the origin to glimpse the future and not only talk about global warming, one of the most visible effects, but also about what it means from an intellectual point of view to live in this era of profound changes”, Insua said. For all this, in addition to talking about literature, the meeting aims to raise awareness about the importance of water and the state of the oceans, “but from a vision that is not apocalyptic”, emphasized Carreras.
The trio of speakers emphasized the importance of freedom of expression to make all these stories visible and to “undo historical silences” and open the door to “a committed literature that raises its voice”, with talks and debates starring the authors Tsitsi Dangarembga , Philippe Sands or Rushdie himself. Likewise, they took advantage of the meeting to denounce the death of 57 journalists in 2022 and the imprisonment of more than 500.
Morocco, “a country where there is no full freedom of expression” -in the words of Elisabet Goula-, will also be very present in this edition with speakers such as the geographer Chadia Arab or Mahi Binebine, one of the most prestigious figures of current Moroccan literature. All of them will try to bring the cultural and literary reality closer to the attendees. “It is one of our neighboring countries and it is a great unknown for many of us. The idea is to strengthen ties and make known the literary vitality that always comes to us under the shadow of prejudices and ignorance”, pointed out Carreras, recalling that “the Moroccan foreign community is the largest in Catalonia”.
Along these lines, Goula assured that they are “voices that are close to us and that have a lot to say”, for this reason the meeting aims to “weave bridges” between Catalonia and Morocco and make visible the union between the two with activities such as the concert by Ikram Bouloum, who assures that he conceives his music as a tool to revisit his own identity.
In addition to the usual presentations, the festival is completed with a program that includes an installation dedicated to the writer Aurora Bertrana, a poetic walk along the river Besòs by the artist Marc Caellas, a silent opera along the Rambla, by Joana Moll, and a collective reading of the classic attributed to Homer, the Iliad.
