Pierre Ducrozet is the voice of the “most immediate present” of contemporary French literature. His work is an accurate look at the body, man, and literature.

With the purpose of narrating the quintessential 21st-century story, Ducrozet sets in motion a daring network of storytelling that follows the itinerary of Álvaro, a young Mexican teacher who survived the tragic events of Iguala, which culminated in the disappearance of the 43 teachers’ college students on the night of September 26, 2014, to Silicon Valley, where his encounter with transhumanists and Anonymous hackers confronts make him face new forms of violence. 

For Ducrozet, La invención de los cuerpos (Canta Mares, 2020), is a storytelling proposal in that “it is a story without center or hierarchies of elements,” but also a way to “write a history of contemporary bodies,” to “observe how our era sculpts and deforms them,” and ultimately to propose a reflection on literature because this “should not only be abstract, but physical, organic—for the writer as for the reader.”

Abdelá Taia, French-speaking Moroccan writer, and filmmaker, portrays in his works the world around him, the echoes of the situations he lived through during his teenage years, and his life as a gay man in a homophobic environment. 

Despite his undeniable talent to communicate through literature, the success and tenacity of his works have often remained under the shadow of his declaration of homosexuality, which turned him into the first Moroccan intellectual to announce his preferences publicly. Because of this, Taia finds that the right to be authentic is a privilege to which few can have access.  

The hardships of minorities and the desire for freedom of expression are the foundation of this discussion between Andrés Treviño, director of Diversidad Sexual Jalisco, and Abdelá Taia, whose autobiographical novels reflect upon the exclusion in a world that does not always acknowledge its diversity.