Letras Africanas: Moussa Konaté en Casa África

Moussa Konaté, a writer from Mali whose work is internationally well-renowned, will take part in the 2012 Edition of  SILA as part of African Letters, a Casa África programme that was created in 2009 so as to bring the Spanish public closer to the main voices of contemporary African literature.

Literature is without a doubt one of the essential ways of bringing us closer to the African continent's social, political and cultural reality. However, a Spanish reader's access to that literary production is very limited, for reasons such as translation and the lack of inclusion into our country's book market.

With this project Casa África wants to contribute in remedying this shortage, by facilitating the presence in several Spanish cities of the continent's most prestigious writers, giving special priority to the authors published in the Casa África Literature Collection.

In this way, African Letters has allowed the presence in Spain of leading authors such as Henri Lopes (Democratic Republic of Congo), Germano Almeida ( Cape Verde), Fatou Diome (Senegal), Tanella Boni (Ivory Coast), María Nsue (Equatorial Guinea), Veronique Tadjo (Ivory Coast), Achmat Dangor (South Africa), Abasse Ndione (Senegal), Jamal Mahjoub (Sudan), Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), Fatou Diome (Senegal), Emmanuel Dongala (Congo), Alain Mabanckou (Congo) or even Moussa Konaté sometimes.

Now  Moussa Konaté is once again with us, author (among other works) of L'assassin du Banconi, the first genre novel from this fervent admirer of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky which was first published by the editorial Gallimard in 2002, earning him the general praise of the international critics. Mouusa will speak on his work as part of the International African Book Fair and African Letters at Casa África's   headquarters (C/. Alfonso XIII, 5. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) on 14th December 2012 at 1p.m..

At this event he will be accompanied by Antonio Lozano, an author with whom this institution has always counted on with anything related to the African letters.

Antonio Lozano was born in Tangiers in 1956 and currently lives in Agüimes (Gran Canaria), municipality of which he was councillor for Culture between 1987 and 2003. He has a degree in Translation and Interpretation and works as a writer. He is the director of the Sur-Encuentro Teatral Tres Continentes Festival and the International Oral Narration Festival "Count on Agüimes" and coordinator of the African Letters programme.

His first novel, Harraga (Zoela, 2002), was praised by writers such as Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Dulce Chacón and Fernando Marías. Winner of the 1st Novel Prize for the best thriller published in Spain, he obtained a special mention from the jury of the Silverio Cañada Memorial Prize 2003 for the thriller novel, set up by the Gijón's Thriller week. His novel El caso Sankara (Almuzara, 2006), was the winner of the 1st Ciudad de Carmona International Prize for Thrillers. He has also published Preludio para una muerte (Ediciones B, 2006) and Donde mueren los ríos, which was a finalist for the 1st Brigada 21 Award.