The Conversations will begin with the awarding of the 2019 Formentor Literary Prize to the French writer Annie Ernaux. This is the sentence of the jury comprised of Antonio Colinas, Víctor Gómez Pin, Elide Pittarello, Marta Rebón and the chairperson Basilio Baltasar. The ceremony highlights the work of Ernaux as an “implacable exercise of truth that penetrates the most intimate nooks and crannies of consciousness”. A prize endowed with 50,000 Euros which has already been awarded to writers like Carlos Fuentes and Juan Goytisolo.
Like every September, the event gathers the most prominent pens of the moment to converse on one of the great themes of literature. This year the interventions will revolve around “Monsters, beasts and aliens. The dark chimeras of illusion”. A play on literary imagination to be held in the inspiring, singular setting of the Hotel Barceló Formentor.
The organisers of the Conversations invite guest writers to select some of their favourite works from the universal library – a novel or an essay that entices them to speak of the figures and characters evoked by the motto of the event. And for three days in autumn, the intervention by the authors becomes a powerful lecture before an audience fascinated by literature and books: they reveal books to readers which the latter had never heard of, or unveil the unknown nuances of the works they had read.