Festival 42

Writing and reading fantasy literature can also be fun and subversive. Many authors have opened the door to irreverence and created undisciplined worlds where games, excesses and other genre transgressions are the driving force behind the story. Bea Aguilar has done so following the precepts of Bizarro fiction, in a novel that seems like a fix-up: Jonathan Royce y las tortugas ninfómanas del espacio exterior (Cetus), following her success with the technique in various short stories. Also no stranger to Bizarro fiction, but back under the precepts of science fiction in this case, Alfredo Álamo is presenting El sueño de Escila (Obscura), where the passengers of an intergenerational ship wake up from their imaginary worlds and collide with the harsh reality of the journey. Meanwhile, prestigious translator Mara Faye Lethem is taking risks in her fiction and trying to break down the clichés surrounding motherhood, in the form of biting comedy, in Series boja si no ho fessis (Males Herbes). Then there’s Albert Serra, who applies the concept of transgression to the videogame NetherWorld, where a strange, hetero-basic jellyfish deals with a failing marriage through alcohol, drugs, sex and interactions with other macabre characters. What is shaping up to be the most irreverent round table at the 42 Festival will be led by Edgar Cotes, a writer and translator who has recently taken another leap of faith with his new novel, Etern con el laberint (Spècula).