Join Andres Neuman and Boyd Tonkin who will be in conversation discussing Andres' sensational novel 'Fracture'.
Join Andrs Neuman and Boyd Tonkin who will be in conversation discussing Andrs' sensational novel 'Fracture'.It is 2011, and Mr Watanabe, who has recently returned to Japan following a long and distinguished career abroad as an electronics executive, finds himself at a station when an earthquake strikes. The earthquake and subsequent disaster at Fukushima nuclear power station provoke the old man to look back on his long life, and compel him to journey to Fukushima to understand first-hand what has happened and how the country will respond. Yoshi Watanabe is one of a few double hibakusha, a survivor of both the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. His status left him as an outsider in a culture unable to deal with what happened. Leaving Japan as a young man, he first moved to Paris, then on to New York, Buenos Aires and Madrid before returning. In each city he had a serious relationship and each of the four women remember their time with Yoshi and reflect on what he taught them about themselves and their place and time.This is an ambitious and absorbing novel written with intimacy and compassion, a tale about love, trauma, memory and nationhood and about what connects us and what sets us apart. Already a sensation in Spain, it is major work of imagination from the prize-winning and highly acclaimed Argentinian author.Neuman is touched by grace. Readers will find something that can only be found in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what. The literature of the 21st century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers. - Roberto BolaoAndrs Neuman is the author of two other novels: 'Traveller of the Century' (2011), which won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and 'Talking to Ourselves' (2012) which was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Andrs was named one of the original Bogot 39, and one of Grantas Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. Fracture has been shortlisted for the Premio Dulce Chacn and the Premio San Clemente. He was born in Buenos Aires and now lives in Granada, Spain.Boyd Tonkin is a journalist, author and critic who writes on books and arts for international media including The Economist, The Financial Times, The Times, New York Review of Books Daily, Wall Street Journal and The Spectator. His readers guide to global fiction, The Hundred Best Novels in Translation, was published in 2018. He chaired the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, and served as Special Adviser to the Prize 2016-2019. He was previously Literary Editor at The Independent, where he re-founded and judged the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and then the newspapers Senior Writer. He is a Trustee of the Orwell Foundation, contributing editor for theartsdesk.com, and editorial adviser to the journal Critical Muslim.
