41st Buenos Aires International Book Fair

 

41st Buenos Aires International Book Fair. (Year 2015)

On this occasion, I made two visits to the 41st Buenos Aires International Book Fair. It ran from April 23rd to Monday, May 11th, 2015, at the Palermo Fairgrounds (Av. Sarmiento 2704, Plaza Italia, City of Buenos Aires). Just because I had gotten two free tickets, I walked through the whole fair on my first visit, and on the second one, I went straight to look for the specific books I was interested in that I hadn't picked up the first time. I bought several of the books to later give away as gifts for various reasons.

Photo 01 traveling museum One of the booths that caught my attention was called Museo Viajero (Traveling Museum), founded in 1995. Theater in schools. At that stand, there was only a fairly large scale model representing colonial-era buildings. Now, looking online, I find out they have a website at the following link: http://elmuseoviajero.com.ar/. It is a theater and historical research company, with the idea of combining historical research, theater, and humor.

My tour of the fair continued, and I reached the Ediciones Salamandra booth, whose website is http://salamandra.info/. Here, a small table featuring noir fiction (crime novels) caught my eye. There were four well-visible titles (La Entrega, Una revelación brutal, Pista negra, and La mujer de un solo hombre) that grabbed my attention because of their cover art. Since I had no idea about these crime novels, I walked over. One of the young women running the booth helped me out and talked about them, assuring me she had read them and liked the one she felt had psychological aspects to the detective work. However, when I read the back covers, I wasn't too convinced and left them there, but I kept looking around the booth and found another one that seemed interesting. On my visit the following day, I went back and bought it. It is the book Tierra de nadie by author Antonio Pennacchi (Salamandra Publishing). I will comment on the book itself in due time, but I must briefly mention what caught my attention about the author. Antonio Pennacchi worked as a factory hand until he was fifty years old. After that, he retired, entered university, and earned a degree in Literature. From then on he began writing, and this book, published in 2010, won the Strega Prize in Italy.

Continuing my walk back and forth, I reached a booth that had practically all Corrientes material, though I suspected it wasn't the provincial booth, since the provincial stands are located in another pavilion. This particular one turned out to be Editorial Moglia (link: http://www.mogliaediciones.com/), which, by the way, is a publisher from Corrientes, and that was the reason behind the themes of their books, which mostly had something to do with Corrientes. Some titles caught my eye, so I started browsing through them. Just then, a gentleman who had been chatting there with the person in charge of the booth came up to me and asked what genre I liked. Just to say something, I told him noir fiction, and he replied, "No, I don't have anything in that genre." Well, the chat ended, the gentleman stepped away, and a woman holding a book walked up to him and asked him for an autograph, which he agreed to, and they started chatting for a moment. A quick general sweep of the booth and there he was—an author published by the house! There was a poster introducing him, and a smaller sign on the counter; the photograph showed him wearing a cap and a bow tie, and that's how he was dressed. I left, and after a while, I came back. I went to see that author's book. I found one that I finally bought as a gift, titled Fredegunda y Brunequilda. Una Historia Medieval written by Osvaldo Benetti (Moglia Ediciones, October 2003). So I asked him what the text was about, asked him to sign it—which he gladly agreed to—and then he told me about his other published books on display there. Something interesting about this author, just like what happened with the Italian author's book mentioned earlier, is what it says on the book flap: "Then I enrolled in my neighborhood high school (BOA no. c4) and graduated with a High School Diploma with an Artistic Orientation, a fact that, at a well-fulfilled 63 years of age, gave me quite a bit of peace of mind." It is another interesting case of a writer who completes his studies later in life, and in this case, he has already written more than twelve books, nine of them with the aforementioned publisher.

I continued my tour at a booth that turned out to be Editorial Biblos Azul, where I found a book called Gitanos. Historias, costumbres, misterio y rechazo by author Alberto Sarramone. I was quietly looking at it when suddenly a gentleman appeared and told me, "If you have any questions, just ask me; I'm the author of the book, and of these ones too" (pointing to the section where the rest of the books were). Well... "Thank you very much," I told him, and the next day, when I returned, this was another of the books I added to my purchase. I still have to read it. I knew the author by name from other books on the subject of immigration, and those texts were right there, but this was the book that interested me. Link to Editorial Biblos: http://www.editorialbiblos.com.ar/ and link to Alberto Sarramone's blog: http://betosarramone.blogspot.com.ar/

Photo 2 tarja magazine Before leaving, I returned to the pavilion where the provincial delegations are located. There, it is possible to find a variety of books of all genres originating from and mostly focused on each of the exhibiting provinces. You just have to look. The photograph shows the pavilion of the province of Jujuy; this time it alludes to a magazine. It didn't even say Jujuy, but it clearly referred to that province since it was located in the provincial pavilion. This time, they paid tribute to the cultural magazine Tarja. This Jujuy-based magazine was published between 1955 and 1960 and had nationwide significance. Hence, the Jujuy booth was set up as the Tarja booth, as seen in the photograph.

At the province of Córdoba booth, I saw a copy of a book that was out of print or rather difficult to find in bookstores.

At the province of Río Negro booth, I specifically looked for at least one of three poetry books, but none of them were there. This same booth had the particularity that from one moment to the next, they would set up some chairs, move a few tables with books right there on the spot to build a micro-auditorium, the guest author would sit down, and the talk or whatever event was scheduled would begin, followed by a book signing. Once it was over, the chairs were put away, the tables were moved back, and it went back to being a regular booth to visit.

Finally, at the province of Salta booth, I purchased a copy titled Cuentos y relatos del norte argentino by author Juan Carlos Dávalos (Biblioteca del norte / Leonor Fleming; 2009).