Andrés Barba is sometimes compared to Daphne du Maurier, Guillermo del Toro, Mariana Enriquez and Shirley Jackson, but he is first and foremost the author of unique novels. Over the years he has quietly built up a fantastic, spell-binding, profound and lyrical body of work, fuelled by themes such as fear, childhood and ghosts …

In 2010 the magazine Granta named him one of the twenty best young Spanish writers. And in recent years, Andrés Barba has only produced enchanting and wonderful texts that have more than confirmed Granta’s intuition. Barba is also a professor of literature and the Spanish translator of the great works of Herman Melville, Henry James and Joseph Conrad.

The conversation between Andrés Barba and Anne-Lise Remacle will be translated into French. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear this prominent writer summon his spirits.

a dizzy spell

‘A beautiful, phantasmagorical novel that explores the depths of affection.’ These laudatory words come from Mariana Enriquez, talking about Barba’s latest novel, El última día de la vida anterior, a true ghost story. At the beginning of the book, a real-estate agent is preparing a vacant house for a viewing when she suddenly comes face to face with a seven-year-old boy. The agent feels inexplicably drawn to the child and strikes up a conversation with him. She gives up trying to sell the house, but continues to guard it and returns to it in secret time and again. Did she make up this ghostly child? A disturbing, mysterious and poetic novel that will cast a dizzy spell on you – a unique reading experience.

‘Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands.’

Edmund White

about the author

Andrés Barba (b. 1975 in Madrid) is a writer, poet, photographer and essayist. He broke through in Spain with the novel La hermana de Katia (made into a film by Mijke de Jong) and his novels have won several prizes, including the prestigious Premio Heralde de Novela for A Luminous Republic. He has taught at Bowdoin College (US) and is currently a professor at the University of Madrid.

about the interviewer

Anne-Lise Remacle was formerly a bookseller and is now a freelance journalist and moderator of literary events in Brussels. She is particularly interested in the uncanny and in text-image relations. She also coordinates the translation and writing residency at Seneffe in August, organized by Passa Porta to promote French-language Belgian literature.