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Discussion with Argentine writer Eduardo Berti and Spanish writer Sergio del Molino on their libraries and their influence on their work Writers Sergio del Molino and Eduardo Berti are the guests of the Instituto Cervantes in Brussels for this new edition of the Benengeli Festival of Spanish-language literature, organized across the Instituto Cervantes’ international network of centers. Both authors will discuss libraries and how they are present in their works and their lives, in a conversation moderated by a translator and programmer from the Brussels Book Fair. Spanish writer and journalist Sergio del Molino (Madrid, 1979) is the author of La España vacía, an essay that sparked social and political debate on depopulation and the impact of the abandonment of rural life on the Spanish collective imagination, for which he received the Premio Cálamo in 2016. He made his debut in 2009 with the short story collection Malas influencias and that same year published the essay Soldados en el jardín de la paz, a journalistic investigation into a German colony in Zaragoza, the city where he lives. In 2012 he published his first novel, No habrá más enemigo, which was among the ten most recommended titles by Spanish booksellers from Confederación Española de Gremios y Asociaciones de Librerías. In 2013 he published La hora violeta, in which he recounts the illness and death of his son Pablo, who was diagnosed with leukemia at ten months old and passed away just a year later. The book won the Premio Ojo Crítico and the Premio Tigre Juan. In Lo que a nadie le importa, through the figure of his grandfather José Molina and the story of his own family, the author portrays a generation of Spaniards shaped by the Civil War. In 2018 he received the Premio Espasa de Ensayo for Lugares fuera de sitio, reflecting on small border territories on the edges of Spain. In 2024 he won the Premio Alfaguara de Novela for Los alemanes, a novel based on a real event—the arrival in Spain in 1916 of a group of German refugees fleeing Cameroon during World War I. As a journalist, he was a reporter for Heraldo de Aragón and is currently a columnist for El País and a contributor to the radio program Más de uno on Onda Cero, as well as a member of the team behind La Cultureta. Argentine writer and journalist Eduardo Berti (Buenos Aires, 1964) debuted with the short story collection Los pájaros (1994), for which he received the Cultura magazine fellowship-prize and was named one of the best books of the year by Página/12. This was followed by two widely acclaimed novels, Agua and La mujer de Wakefield, both translated into several languages and finalists for the prestigious Prix Femina Étranger in France. In 2002 he simultaneously published in Spain and Argentina the short stories La vida imposible, whose French translation received the Libralire-Fernando Aguirre Prize. In 2004, his novel Todos los Funes was a finalist for the Premio Herralde and was named one of the best books of the year by the Times Literary Supplement. At the end of 2011, he won both the Premio Las Américas de Novela and the Premio Emecé in Argentina for his novel El país imaginado. In addition, Eduardo Berti has worked as a screenwriter for film (Nordeste), television (La cueva, Mano a mano, Elepé), and documentaries (notably a series dedicated to the history of tango). He is also the founder of the independent publishing house La Compañía de los Libros and a member of Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature).