Munir Hachemi at House of Books & Friends
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
House of Books & Friends are delighted to welcome Munir Hachemi on Thursday 30 May to discuss his new book, Living Things, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Munir Hachemi’s Living Things (translated from Spanish into English by Julia Sanches) is described as a “genre-bending and dystopian eco-thriller … a punk-like blend of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, heralding an exciting new voice in international fiction”.
The story follows four recent graduates – Munir, G, Ernesto and Álex – who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don’t go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living on a campsite, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist’s thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling.
Munir Hachemi’s career as a writer began with him selling his stories in the form of fanzines in the bars of the Lavapiés neighbourhood of Madrid and he currently lives in Buenos Aires. He is the author of Living Things, which appeared in Spanish in 2018, and El árbol viene [The Coming of the Tree] (2023), and he is also a translator from Chinese and English. In 2021, he appeared on Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists list.
The event will start at 6pm, and will include a conversation with Munir Hachemi and a Q&A, before an opportunity to get your books signed. Get there early and have a rummage around the bookshop.
