Feria 2024

For our second year at the Madrid Book Fair, we return with our little version of Desperate Literature in the heart of the Retiro and some amazing events. Come visit us!

Para nuestro segundo año en la Feria del Libro de Madrid, volvemos con nuestra pequeña versión de Literatura Desesperada en el corazón del Retiro y algunos eventos increíbles. ¡Ven a visitarnos!

THIS YEAR WE MADE A FERIA GAZETTE
LISTING ALL OUR EVENTS, GIVING INFO ON THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN, INCLUDING A STORY FROM OUR 2023 LITERARY PRIZE, BOOK REVIEWS,
A DESPERATE MAP OF MADRID AND MUCH MORE

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO READ

Tenemos un montón de firmas y eventos, entre las lecturas que se harán en la tienda y todas las firmas en nuestro stand de la Feria. Este año, cerramos la feria con un eventazo en El Ateneo de Madrid para Bloomsday. Con John Banville, Eimear McBride, y Lisa Hannigan.

We’ve got a whole host of signings and events, with all readings happening at the shop, and all signings at our stand in the Feria. This year, we close the feria with a all out event in the Ateneo de Madrid for Bloomsday. With John Banville, Eimear McBride, and Lisa Hannigan. 

// Escríbenos tu poema
en la cabina de mecanografía //

// Come write a poem
in the typewriting booth //

Domingo
2 de junio

Nuria PEREZ
No tocarás

Desbordante de imaginación y fuerza evocativa, con diálogos y escenarios espléndidos, No tocarás es la primera novela de Nuria Pérez, creadora del exitoso pódcast Gabinete de Curiosidades.

FIRMA en CASETA 27
12h00 – 14h00

Lunes
3 de junio

Vesna MARIC
(evento en inglés)
firma 18h30 @caseta 27
lectura 20h00 @librería

“The President Shop is a marvelous, timeless book that sweeps between the personal and the panoramic as it asks, Does every family, or country, contain an axis, around which the rest of it spins? Can you hear the voice of a stone? How clearly can anyone see the past or future? For which tyrannies have we been unwittingly waving flags?” —Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Certain American States

The President, the founder of the Nation, is an old man now, but his young and unifying spirit stands steadfastly at the heart of, Vesna Maric’s debut novel. Images of and tributes to the President are found in all homes in the Nation, procured from stores like the one Ruben and Rosa run. The couple met as partisans, fighting to forge the Nation in the crucible of conflict. But even though their pride shines as brightly as the gilded bust of the President, the younger generation has questioned whether the Nation really has its citizens best interests in mind. Ruben’s brother is actively working to avoid mandatory military service as he pines away for another man, and Ruben and Rosa’s daughter Mona is too busy adjusting to womanhood to get caught up in state-mandated nostalgia. To further exacerbate the family tension, an elderly uncle claims to have invented a machine to see into the future, which he stores in the basement of the family’s apartment building. But there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble.

SIGNING AT CASETA 27,
IN THE RETIRO

READING AT DESPERATE LITERATURE
CALLE CAMPOMANES 13 20h0 

Miércoles
5 de junio

Pilar ABUJA

firma 18h30 @caseta 27
lectura 20h00 @librería

A modo de informe, reescribe el cuento tradicional del lobo feroz en una original prosa poética. La autora rescata su voz de niña acorralada y ofrece un testimonio conmovedor, el de una mujer que ha sobrevivido a la violencia sexual masculina contra la infancia, todavía tan frecuente y silenciada. “No podrás nada contra nosotras, lobo. / Ni contra mí. / Aunque esta sea mi historia.”

SIGNING AT CASETA 27,
IN THE RETIRO

READING AT DESPERATE LITERATURE
CALLE CAMPOMANES 13 20h0 

Domingo
4 de junio

Munir HACHEMI
Cosas Vivas / Living Things
(evento bilingüe)
firma 18h30 @caseta 27
lectura 20h00 @librería

We invite Munir Hachemi for a bilingual event Cosas Vivas (Pereférica) / Living Things (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Living Things follows four recent graduates – Munir, G, Ernesto and Álex – who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don’t go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living on a campsite, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist’s thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling. A genre-bending and dystopian eco-thriller, Living Things is a punk-like blend of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, heralding an exciting new voice in international fiction.

Cuatro jóvenes españoles (uno de ellos, el narrador, de origen argelino) viajan un verano hasta el sur de Francia para ganar algo de dinero en la vendimia, pero finalmente, después de una serie de peripecias tan patéticas como divertidas, acaban empleándose como temporeros en una de esas empresas biotecnológicas que explotan desde hace décadas el mundo agrario y que, según ciertas teorías, acabarán por arruinarlo del todo.

Alta y Baja Cultura, Bolaño y el punk, filosofía y terror, crítica social sin maniqueísmos… Un sinfín de sonidos y conceptos resuenan en estas páginas unas veces apocalípticas (como en Soylent Green, aquella película de ciencia ficción de Richard Fleischer y Charlton Heston) y otras falsamente ingenuas. Una combinación tan poderosa como arriesgada que, sin embargo, logra hacer visible la amenaza que ocultan algunas capas de la realidad.

SIGNING AT CASETA 27,
IN THE RETIRO

READING AT DESPERATE LITERATURE
CALLE CAMPOMANES 13 20h0 

Lunes
10 de junio

Michael DONKOR
Grow Where They Fall
firma 18h30 @caseta 27
lectura 20h00 @librería

We invite Micheal Donkor to sign at our stand then read from his newest novel at Desperate Literature.

Grow Where They Fall is a beautifully written, spirited and deeply moving novel about a young man finding the courage to expand the limits of who he might become, from the acclaimed author of Hold.

Bright and precocious ten-year-old Kwame Akromah knows how to behave. He knows the importance of good manners, how to stay at the top of the class and out of the way when his mother and father are angry with each other. But when his charismatic cousin Yaw arrives from Ghana to live with the family while he looks for work, the rules Kwame has learned about the world can no longer guide him.

Twenty years later, Kwame is a secondary-school teacher, popular with his students and depended on by his friends. His is a life spent elegantly weaving between the classroom, the labyrinth of Grindr politics and increasingly intermittent visits to his parents’ home. Behind the confident façade, however, he is as driven by caution as he was as a boy.

But when electrifying changemaker Marcus Felix is appointed as headteacher, Kwame must reckon with himself as he never has before. Can he face the ghosts of his childhood? How will he learn to move through the world without losing who he is? And where does existing stop and living begin?

SIGNING AT CASETA 27,
IN THE RETIRO

READING AT DESPERATE LITERATURE
CALLE CAMPOMANES 13 20h00 

Miércoles
12 de junio

Selva ALMADA
firma 18h30 @caseta 27

Sábado
15 de junio

Lisa HANNIGAN
(opening act Davy Lyons)
Concierto 20h00 @librería

SOLD OUT

We invite the magnificent Lisa Hannigan to play an intimate concert in Desperate Literature, with opening act Davy Lyons.

Lisa Hannigan is an Irish singer and songwriter who has internationally released three studio albums on her own label one of which was nominated for UK Mercury Music prize. Over the course of her extensive career to date Lisa has appeared at festivals all over the world, and live TV appearances such as the Tonight show with Jay Leno, The Late Late show with James Corden, and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, and Later with Jools Holland. Lisa has featuring tracks in TV series’ ‘Fargo’ and ‘Legion’, Lisa also sings on the Oscar winning soundtrack to ‘Gravity’. In the past few years she found her acting voice, playing Blue Diamond in Cartoon Network’s ‘Steven Universe’ and Bronagh in Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated film ‘Song of the Sea’. Outside of her own album and soundtrack releases, Lisa has contributed vocals to The National albums ‘I Am Easy to Find’ and ‘Sleep Well Beast’ and also sang on Big Red Machine’s eponymous first album.

Domingo
16 de junio

Eimear MCBRIDE
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
(event in English)
lectura 14h00 @librería

Eimear McBride’s award-winning debut novel tells the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. It is a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator’s head, experiencing her world at first hand. This isn’t always comfortable – but it is always a revelation.

WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD

WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE

READING AT DESPERATE LITERATURE
CALLE CAMPOMANES 13 

EVENT MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO CULTURE IRELAND

Domingo
16 de junio

BLOOMSDAY
CELEBRATING JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES
with
John BANVILLE
Eimear MCBRIDE
Lisa HANNIGAN
Marta FERNÁNDEZ VÁZQUEZ

& the Bloomsday Society of Madrid
(bilingual event)

19h00 @ El Ateneo de Madrid

We celebrate Bloomsday with a star-studded cast of readers in one of Madrid’s most illustrious literary venues!

Expect readings, music, food, and literary smut.
There’s literally no better way to celebrate the Bloomsday evening.

This year’s celebrations are being held in collaboration with The Bloomsday Society of Madrid, Soy de la Cuesta, Culture Ireland and Tourism Ireland.