A wind that lays waste

One of the most outstanding voices of Argentinian and Latin American literature, Selva Almada has been praised for her intense writing, pared-back style and bold themes. She became an international sensation and was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize with Dead Girls, a book about femicides in Argentina which combines investigation with fiction to create a journalistic novel. Her previous works The Wind that Lays Waste and Not a River had already established her as a writer of great political and social sensitivity, with her intricate style raising comparisons to Juan Rulfo for the way she fuses an unadulterated literary heritage with an entirely modern artistic identity. Without resorting to lyricism, Almada writes about gendered violence, societal despair, the weight of memory and the gravity of nature with razor sharp focus. Her work, rooted in a deep connection between writing and nature, teems with existential explorations and lurking tragedies. She is joined by journalist and book critic Tina Mandilara in a discussion that will examine how social conditions affect writing and why the local can also be universal.