Vicente Luis Mora interviewed A K Blakemore

Spanish writer and literary critic Vicente Luis Mora talks about his award-winning novel Centroeuropa, a story recently published in English for the first time that digs deep into Europe’s history.

As he attempts to bury his recently deceased wife at the start of the 19th century, newly widowed Redo Hauptshammer is digging a grave in Prussia when he uncovers the body of a soldier. The next day he uncovers two more soldiers, all of them fallen cavalrymen bearing the secrets of an earlier era The novel follows Redo’s mysterious life and digs into the strata of European soil as more is excavated from the earth, uncovering a long history of oppression, expropriation and erasure.

Centroeuropa introduces English-speaking readers to one of Europe’s pre-eminent experimental prose writers currently at work.

‘Mora embarks on a radical adventure in a Europe ravaged by wars and revolutions that has no reference in our current literature.’ La Vanguardia

Centroeuropa won the 2019 Malaga Prize and was a 2022 Pen Translates award-winner. Mora is a literary critic, writer and professor. His books include a poetry collection, Tiempo, and the novel, Circular 07. Las afueras. He writes a blog, Diario de lecturas, featuring cultural criticism and exploring new genres of inter-artistic analysis such as video review, cultural passageways or hypercriticism, and is director of the Cervantes Institute in Albuquerque, the United States. Here he talks to writer and poet A K Blakemore, author of two collections of poetry, Humbert Summer and Fondue, winner of the Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection.

Part of the festival’s programme of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture.