Irene Vallejo, author of the bestseller El Infinito en un Junco, speaks with EL PAS about the transformative power of the book in the peripheries, Colombian or Spanish. The Bogotá Book Fair is one of the largest fairs in the Hispanic world and this year has as its main transversal theme the nature.

“The book is a living being, engendered, born, it develops, says the Spanish author, quoting the words of the Afro-Colombian author Arnoldo Palacios, when the centenary of his birth was celebrated. The survival of nature is linked to the survival of books, says the author, before his inaugural speech at the book festival in Bogotán. 'Reading modified our ability to think. And nature, its different forms or materials, allowed us to name reality,' he adds, in his speech, on the birth of writing, of the alphabet itself, when a P did not represent the letter but the human language began to namereality. Irene Vallejo is a writer who worked on the classic history of books from the Spanish periphery. She will open the doors of the book fair in Colombia this week. The book fair will be the first of its kind in the country. The Colombian Pacific department of Chocó is one of enormous environmental wealth and a long history of discrimination against Afro peoples. In addition to giving an inaugural talk at FILBO, Vallejo will have a conversation about books and democracy. She also will be signing books and will visit the Bogotá book fair. The event will take place from September 26 to 28 in the city of Cartagena, the capital of the Pacific coast department, Quibdó, in the Colombian state of Bocas del Toro. The fair is open to the public and is free to attend. For more information, go to FILBO.org or go to www.filbo.com. Colombia is home to more than 1.2 million people.