Life imitates art as El Salvador pressures book fair to bar dissenting writer [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Life imitates art as El Salvador pressures book fair to bar dissenting writer

Barbers on Strike, author Michelle Recinos’s collection of short stories, has apparently upset strongman president Nayib Bukele

Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Tue 11 Jul 2023 11.30 BST

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The roundup unfolds in Barberos en huelga (Barbers on Strike), a short story in Recinos’s new book, in which she chronicles a nation’s descent into repression and paranoia.

The disturbing satire is set in a fictional place called San Carlos. But her real-life inspiration is obvious to anyone who has been following the 17-month crackdown in the writer’s ever-more-authoritarian home, El Salvador.

And the critique appears to have upset the country’s government.

Recinos’s collection of short stories was due to be featured at a recent book fair in neighbouring Guatemala celebrating Salvadorian literature. But, according to the author and her publisher, her appearance was cancelled after pressure from El Salvador’s embassy.

“We want to stress our disappointment with the position of the Salvadorian government, which we believe limits freedom of expression as well as freedom of publication,” Recinos’s Guatemala-based publisher said in a statement.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/el-salvador-michelle-recinos-barbers-strike-book-guatemala-president-nayib-bukele

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