On Thursday, February 26, at 6:30 p.m., the Cultural Center of El Corte Inglés in Santiago de Compostela will host the third debate on the finalist novels of the 19th Casino de Santiago European Novel Prize.

'Desertar' by Mathias Enard will be the novel discussed in the literary colloquium, moderated by Loli Sans and Marga Vidal.

About the novel

In an unspecified Mediterranean landscape, an exhausted soldier flees the war with the intention of crossing the border. His plan is disrupted when he encounters a woman who is also escaping the barbarity. This story intertwines with another, set on September 11, 2001, when the attack on the Twin Towers interrupts a river tribute in Berlin to Paul Heudeber, a brilliant mathematician from the former GDR who remained loyal to the eastern side of the wall.

Nearly twenty years later, with the war in Ukraine as a backdrop, Heudeber's daughter recalls that day and the lives of her father and mother, an absent and contradictory figure.

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