Romancero Books with the support of the Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs of the Spanish Embassy in London, AC/E Programme for the Internalisation of Spanish Culture, Hackney PRIDE 365 and Hackney Council presents the V London Festival of Queer Spanish Culture
Daniel Saldaña París, author of The Dance and the fire in conversation with Jorge Gárriz
Translated by Christina MacSweeney and published by Charco Press
In a gripping, atmospheric new novel by acclaimed Mexican writer Daniel Saldaña París, three friends forever bound by erotic flames of the past reunite in a city engulfed by wildfires and an ecstatic dancing plague.
After years apart, three high school friends return to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where an intense love triangle once left an indelible mark on their adolescence. The city, surrounded by a ring of claustrophobic wildfires, brings out the past and confronts them with their present: they must once again face the entanglement of friendship and desire, the seemingly distant discovery of sexuality, complex parental relationships, and the daunting task of artistic fulfilment.
In the background, two forces of chaos and destruction are a constant presence. As fires ravage the physical landscape, one of the friends begins choreographing an ecstatic dance inspired by the German expressionist Mary Wigman and medieval Danse Macabre. What starts as a coping mechanism for the anxieties of youth and climate catastrophe becomes an overpowering, all-consuming hysteria. Mysterious powers are awakened, the boundary between reality and myth begins to blur, and the friends find themselves immersed in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain universe.
Daniel Saldaña París is a poet, essayist and novelist born in Mexico City in 1984. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary Mexican literature. His debut novel Among Strange Victims (En medio de extrañas víctimas, 2013) was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award and Ramifications (El nervio principal, 2018), his second novel, has brought him even more praise and admiration in Mexico and abroad. He has two poetry collections and his work has been included in several anthologies, including México20: New Voices, Old Traditions (Pushkin Press, 2015). In 2017, he was chosen as one of the Hay Festival’s Bogotá39, a selection of the best Latin American writers under forty. He has been a writer in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Omi International Center for the Arts, MALBA and Banff Center.
Event in English
Copies of the book will be available for purchase after the talk.
Check the Festival's website to know about our other events:
https://bit.ly/FLQEL25