Book Talk with Gabriela Wiener: Reading Beyond Desire and Revolution
Gabriela Wiener, a Peruvian writer, poet, and journalist, will virtually join the Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Latin American Literature Reading Group for a thought-provoking discussion of her most recent publication, Atusparia (2024). Described as "exquisite," "satirical," and "lightly futuristic," Atusparia forces us to come face-to-face with the interwoven complexities of neoliberalism, unsatiable extractivism, indigenous revolts, and what it means to desire and love against this background. Having received the Premio Ciutat de Barcelona de Literatura en Lengua Castellana, for this publication, Gabriela Wiener continues to solidify her standing as one of the most influential Peruvian writers of contemporary times.
This hybrid event is free and open to all (WashU community members and local, national, and international audiences). Please R.S.V.P. here.
This event is sponsor by Revista de Estudios Hispánicos and the Center for the Humanities at WashU.
Book Description:
“Keeping up with Wiener is one of the few luxuries we have left.” - Alejandro Zambra
A left-wing politician and victim of lawfare finds herself behind bars in a high-security prison deep in the Amazon. She calls herself Atusparia, after a nineteenth-century Peruvian indigenous leader and the staunchly communist school where she studied during the waning days of the Cold War. But love in the times of capitalism devolved into a spiral of drugs and frenzied sexual encounters that led her astray from her ideals, until she felt called back to her roots. A pilgrimage on foot to Lake Titicaca inspired her to rename herself after the revolutionary heroine of her youth.
No precedents come to mind for Gabriela Wiener’s latest novel. Atusparia is sui generis: satirical, auto-fictional and vaguely futuristic. Somewhere between social realism and poetic fantasy, Wiener takes her craft to new heights and shows us, in this post-indigenist “great Russian novel,” how hierarchies and power struggles can corrode freedom movements from the inside.
Source: Penguin Random House
