Julian Barnes se dirigió a los asistentes y leyó el prólogo de su obra Through the Window: Seventeen Essays (and one short story), que dice así:
“A Sempé cartoon set in a second-hand bookshop. An upstairs room, shelves of books from floor to ceiling; bare boards, no customers, a lampshade hanging. On the right, the assembled offerings of HISTORY. On the left, mirroring ranks of PHILOSOPHY. Straigt ahead there is a similar section, but pierced by a window, through which we can look down down onto a street corner. Coming towards it from de left is a little man wearing a hat. Coming towards it from the right is a little woman, also wearin a hat. They cannot see one another, but from our vantage point we can tell they are about to meet, perhaps bump into one another. Spmething is about to happen, and be witnessed. This section of the bookshop is called FICTION.
This, simply put, in graphic form, is what I have always believed, as a reader and as a novelist. Fiction, more than any other written form, explains and expands life. Biology, of course, also explains life; so do biography and biochemistry and biophysics and biomechanics and biopsychology. But all the biosciences yield to biofiction. Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin; thr conscious and the subconscious. What it is to be an individual, what it means to be part of a society. What it means to be alone. Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in the silence of your mind.”
Podéis leer las entrevistas y artículos publicados en los principales periódicos en los siguientes enlaces:
ENTREVISTA AL AUTOR EN LA VOZ DE GALICIA. http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/cultura/2015/03/05/me-imagino-creer-dios-debe-tener-ventajas/0003_201503G5P38991.htm
REPORTAJE SOBRE EL AUTOR EN EL PAÍS: http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2015/03/04/galicia/1425489262_281872.html
ACRÓBATAS DAS LETRAS 