Xavi Ayén presents “Aquellos Años del Boom” (Those Boom Years)

Over a period of ten years, cultural journalist and frequent collaborator with the newspaper La Vanguardia, Xavi Ayén, gathered information and evidence relating to what is known as the Latin American literary boom and its relationship with Barcelona. The fruit of these investigations, which led him to examine more than three hundred bibliographic references, is the book entitled Aquellos Años del Boom (Those boom years), winner of the 2013 Gaziel Award for Biographies and Memoirs.

The book features many previously unpublished interviews and documents and relates to the period between the arrival of Gabriel García Márquez and his family to Barcelona, in 1967, and the famous rift between García Márquez and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa in Mexico in 1976. Simultaneously, Those Boom Years is also a chronicle of Barcelona towards the end of the Franco regime and a rigorous dissertation on one of the most important Spanish-language literary movements of the 20th century. Under the auspices of literary agent Carmen Balcells, the two future Nobel prize winners, as well as many other Latin American writers, such as Jorge Edwards, José Donoso and Álvaro Mutis, arranged meetings with Spanish and Catalan publishers, critics, journalists and writers the likes of Goytisolo, Gimferrer, Barral, Castellet and Beatriz de Moura.

Aquellos Años del Boom will be presented by the author and El País literary critic, J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, in the La Central bookshop on Carrer Mallorca on Tuesday the 16th of September, beginning at 7.30 pm. Entry to the event is free and more information is available on the La Central website.