In a mental climate such as this, the very act of writing a story or a poem – even if you’re not at that moment writing about “the situation” – instantly becomes a tiny act of protest, of defiance; an act of personal definition within a reality that threatens to wipe us out… …When we write here we manage to experience the almost forgotten flexibility of a change of perspective; of looking at reality from somebody else’s eyes, sometim...

An acclaimed new literary voice from Argentina, Iosi Havilio came to Jewish Book Week to discuss his first novel Open Door, an atmospheric tale of solitude that has been likened to Albert Camus’s L’Etranger. When her partner disappears, a young veterinary assistant drifts from the city towards Open Door, a small town in the Argentinean Pampas named after its psychiatric hospital. Embarking on a new life in the country, she finds herself living with an ageing ranch-hand and courted ...