Thurs 13 June

18:30-9pm

Acclaimed Venezuelan writer Rodrigo Blanco Calderón will be in conversation with award-winning translator Daniel Hahn about their International Booker-nominated novel SIMPATÍA

In Simpatiá, a joyfully absurdist shaggy dog story set in modern-day Caracas, a teacher called Ulises is tasked with turning his grand ancestral home into a shelter for the stray dogs left behind by the intellectual elites who have fled the city in the wake of political upheaval. A suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns on the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo by one of Latin American literature's brightest new stars.

Rodrigo Blanco Calderón is a writer, editor and university lecturer With his first novel The Night, he won the 2016 Paris Rive Gauche Prize, the Critics Award in Venezuela and the 2019 Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Prize. He is also the author of the short fiction collection Sacrifices (translated by Thomas  Bunstead). Simpatía was longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.

Daniel Hahn is a multiple award-winning writer and translator. With Noel Hernández González, he co-translated Simpatia and Rodrigo Blanco Calderón's previous novel, The Night.