Dacia Maraini will be presented to Mexican students and lecturers in a series of meetings organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City. The cycle will kick off on 21 November with a meeting with the students of the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana, featuring a dramatic reading of ‘Sor Juana’, a play by the Italian writer depicting the portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a poetess nun who lived in the 17th century.
The cycle will continue on the following day at the Italian Cultural Institute with the presentation of the book ‘Passi affrettati’ (‘Hurried Steps’) on the theme of abuse of women. The Spanish version of this book was translated as part of the literary translation course organised by the Institute in the first semester of 2018 curated by Laboratorio Traduxit, and coordinated by Professor Barbara Bertoni. It is an original experiment developed by the Italian Cultural Institute now at its third edition in which an Italian piece of literature not yet published in Spanish is translated by the students of the course. Each student translates a part of the book but then the translation is discussed and corrected in class by all the course attendees and the coordinator.
On Friday, the cycle envisages a meeting with the writer at the Universitad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. On Monday, the writer will take part in a round table with José Manuel Fajardo (Spain) and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands), as part of the programme of the Festival de las Letras Europeas. To wind up the week dedicated to her, on Tuesday, 27 November, Ms Maraini will deliver a lectio magistralis on the theme ‘Cuerpo Feliz. Historias de mujeres y revoluciones’ (‘Happy Body. Story of Women and Revolutions’) at the Guadalajara Book Fair.
