Festival 42

Multi-award-winner China Miéville deserves an event series that does him justice, and he will have just that on Friday afternoon at the 42 Festival, led by Cristina Jurado, an expert in fantasy and regular at the festival. Miéville has had a decisive impact on hybrid fiction, as he incorporates different sources, traditions and genres into his stories. In the foreword to his first collection of short stories, he coined the expression ‘new weird’ to refer to stories filled with fantastic, anti-realist elements that champion the power of the imagination as a valid way of interacting with the world. This first event of MiévilleCon will look at this borderland literature which transcends genres and explores society’s traumas from unexpected, often uncomfortable perspectives. Miéville’s prose is also known for its density and its abundance of neologisms. At this round table, authors of this type of fiction will come together with communicators and Catalan and Spanish translators to examine Miéville’s unique characteristics and discuss the challenges of translating his work into other languages. The participants are Silvia Schettin, the Spanish translator of The Last Days of New Paris and The City & the City; Marta Armengol, the Catalan translator of The Book of Elsewhere; author Ramiro Sanchiz, known for works such as Un pianista de provincias, and communicator Miquel Codony. They will be led by the creator of MiévilleCon, the writer and Miéville expert Cristina Jurado.