Padura, guest of honor at the Toulouse crime fiction festival

October 16, 2019

The Cuban writer Leonardo Padura participates this weekend in the Festival Polars du Sud de Toulouse as godfather of the annual gathering around the noir novel, which this year focuses its attention on Latin American creations.

Padura, Princess of Asturias Prize for Letters in 2015 and author of the novel The Man Who Loved Dogs, one of his most well-known titles in France, will be the godfather of this eleventh edition in which Boris Quercia (Chile), Ernesto Mallo and Carlos Salem (Argentina), Martín Solares (Mexico), Víctor del Árbol and Mikel Santiago (Spain) also participate.

"When we created the association we wanted to give visibility to Spanish, Italian, Greek or Arab authors because we thought it was necessary to give visibility to these European or Latin American authors that are harder to find," Jean-Paul Wormus, the festival's president, told Efe.

The prominent Cuban novelist, who also holds the National Prize for Literature on the Island and the Order of Arts and Letters of France (2013), will participate throughout the weekend in different round tables, meetings with the public, talks and book signings alongside the rest of the authors.

The writers have been integrated into the city during the days prior to the festival, with master classes at the university, school establishments, as well as conferences and meetings with students, which has made it possible to attract attention to noir novels by Hispanic authors.

"It is a warmer form of writing, even if the noir novel is precisely dark, somewhat desperate, as opposed to Nordic novels where the characters are always sad I think that literature from the south is more alive," Wormus opined.

Other international authors such as American Kent Anderson, former member of special forces in the Vietnam War and ex-police officer, Icelandic Ragnar Jonasson or French Hervé Le Corré, will be present at this edition.

The festival welcomed around 15,000 people in 2018, which makes it the second most popular in France, behind the one organized by Lyon every spring, known as Quais du Polard.