Hay Festival Dhaka
Spanish Literature in the Americas
(R-L)Eliot Weinberger, Mario Bellatin and David Shook introduce the audiencewith literary works in Spanish language with Rafique un Munir. Photo: Prabir Das Modern Spanish literature has indeed redefined the New World. Eliot Weinberger, Mario Bellatin, David Shook, Chris Heiser have shared their experiences with the literature devotees in a couple of sessions during the Hay Festival Dhaka. Latin American literature has legends like Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But with his originality in building plots and characters, Mario Bellatin has broken grounds in Spanish literature. Mario has crossed the boundary of geography, as sometimes we find mainland China as the setting of his works, sometimes it's India. Mario says, “I write my texts without time and without space...I have found that the space the Latin American literature has in it had become so overrun with political rhetoric that I was unable to talk about what I wanted to say.” Recently Mario has authored a book on the less known and besides authoring poems; David Shook is also working on a project to revive the lost poems in an indigenous North American language through his skilful and artistic translation. David shares his experience of translating the lost world epics: “Literature of this indigenous language is really vibrant. There is however no noticeable step in our country to translate Spanish literature into Bengali from its original texts. One can only hope that through this festival a new bridge will be built between these two cultures.
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