This book brings us the story of Hunger –both its past and un(fore)seen present– in a way that has never been shown and told before. With utmost eloquence, Martín Caparrós passionately responds to the very recent reality that a billion people are right now suffering from hunger, and to the fact that every year nine million die of starvation –a holocaust and a half. After reading this book, no one would dare deny that hunger is the biggest crisis of our time. Nothing has been as lethal or as decisive in humankind´s survival, and without proper nutrition, it makes it very difficult to tend to other world problems such as environmental destruction, overpopulation, gender inequality, or terrorism. This is just one of the many truths the author lays down as the pillars for a much wider and in-depth exploration, while always emphasizing that it also happens to be the most preventable crisis of our time.

In search of the mechanisms that cause this mass starvation and the fights against it, Martín Caparrós sheds geographical and historical barriers, making this book not only serve as a critical overview of the history of hunger, but also as a voyage to different parts of the world, from the poorest (to even some of the richest): Niger, India, Bangladesh, Argentina, Madagascar, South Sudan, and the USA. Each region exemplifies the particular violences and also reaffirms the contradictions that unite them. But most of all, it is in only in the slums and peripheries where the stories of today’s famished can be told. Making an important stop inside the Chicago Board of Trade, the author also includes the stories of those who speculate with food and starve so many people.

Filled with bone-chilling anecdotes and testimonies, none of what you read will be forgotten and the emotional distance we put between us and the victims will have dissipated. All the above makes EL HAMBRE both a masterpiece of literary reportage and a pamphlet for the whole world to read.
 

Martín Caparrós (Buenos Aires 1957) is a well known Argentinean writer and journalist. He has published more than twenty books of non-fiction (and some award-winning novels as well) , most of which have been translated into several languages and have helped established him as one of the most respected narrative journalism writers of his time. He has lived in Paris, where he studied History, Madrid and New York. He has worked as both a television and radio journalist, as editor-in-chief of several magazines, traveled around the world, and translated Voltaire, Shakespeare and Quevedo.

"Martin Caparrós is a true phenomenon and the most important writer of narrative journalism: our Capote, our Kapuscinski.” La Nación

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kontakt:

Piotr Wawrzeńczyk

piotr@literatura.com.pl