European Book Club – Juan Gómez Bárcena
A conversation with Spanish writer Juan Gómez Bárcena around his novel in English translation The Sky Over Lima. An event for book lovers chaired by Literature Ireland Director, Sinéad Mac Aodha.
The European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Ireland is delighted to continue the European Book Club, a series of discussions on a novel in English translation.
In this third session presented by Instituto Cervantes Dublin, we will chat with Spanish writer Juan Gómez Bárcena about his debut novel The Sky Over Lima, translated by Andrea Rosenberg.
The novel, based on a true anecdote by the Spanish writer and Nobel Prize winner, Juan Ramón Jiménez, takes us to Peru in 1904, when two gentlemen from Lima decided to write to the poet pretending to be a girl named Georgina Hübner in order to get signed copies of the author. From that joke, Gómez Bárcena proposes an imaginative recreation of the episode and a fascinating historical account.
Juan Gómez Bárcena (Santander, 1984) has published a book of short stories, Los que duermen (2012) and three novels: The Sky Over Lima, for which he received the award El ojo crítico in 2014, and which has been translated into English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch and Greek; Kanada (2017), and Ni siquiera los muertos (2020). As a critic, he is the coordinator of the anthology Bajo treinta (2013). Gómez Bárcena has received several grants such as the Spanish Academy in Rome or the Antonio Gala Foundation. He lives in Madrid, where he teaches literary workshops.
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