Presentation

Benjamin Labatut was born in Rotterdam in 1980. He spent his childhood in the cities of The Hague and Buenos Aires, and at the age of twelve moved to Santiago, Chile. His first book, La Antártica empieza aquí (Antarctica Starts Here), a collection of short stories, won in 2009 the Caza de Letras Award, given by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and the Municipal Prize in Santiago for the best short-story collection published in Chile in 2012. His second book, Después de la luz (Afterlight), was published by Hueders in 2016. Much more complex, this books depicts darkness and emptiness, in the search of language and silence. At the same time, it questions the role of artists and their inherent solitude. This is a unique and particular book that links Labatut to other disturbing yet essentials writers and essayists such us Pascal Quignard and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Un verdor terrible (When We Cease to Understand the World), Benjamin's third book published in 2020, won an English PEN Award and was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.