10 must-sees from the Kosmopolis 2025 festival

BarcelonaIn its thirteenth edition, the Kosmopolis festival has set out to focus on what is seemingly marginal and peripheral and place it at the center. Hence, three of its axes are comics, South Korean literature, and creation in Galician. "If we make the effort to move away from the comfort of the center, we will have the opportunity to discover new names and recognize their talent," says Elisabet Goula, director of the festival, which will be held from October 22 to 26 at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) and will feature ninety artists from around the world, such as Spiegelman, Charles Burns, and Chris Ware; novelists such as Isabella Hammad, Sigrid Nunez, Kim Hye-hin, José Eduardo Agualusa and Miquel de Palol; poets such as Ismael Ramos and Blanca Luz Vidal; essayists such as Didier Eribon and Kapka Kassabova, and filmmakers such as Carla Simón.

One of the highlights of this edition will be the presence of László Krasznahorkai, Nobel Prize in Literature 2025, just two weeks after the award was announced. "Krasznahorkai has confirmed to us that he will be coming to Barcelona next week, although he canceled his visit to the Frankfurt fair this week," comments Judit Carrera, director of the CCCB. "We know the Nobel Prize is a huge wave, but we're confident he'll visit us because he has an important connection with Barcelona: Acantilado publishes it; Kovacsics is a close friend of his, and his work has just been translated into Catalan for the first time in Cráter."

"The comic book program was born from the exhibition of Chris Ware, one of the historic events of recent years in Barcelona, ​​​​Catalonia and the entire State - explains the deputy head of Culture of the ARA, Xavi Serra, who has advised Kosmopolis on this matter -. Ware has a desire to redefine the limits of the genre, and therefore we have sought names that have sought names that have sought names. is the trunk, we wanted to focus on its roots. That is why we have joined, in the inaugural session, with Françoise Mouly, editor of The New Yorker; Arte Spiegelman, author of Maus, who changed the history of comics, and Charles Burns, who put his finger on the sore spot of American society, revealing its contradictions. The opening ceremony of Kosmopolis will bring together all four in a unique event, very difficult to replicate.

Since debuting in 1985 with Satanic Tango -that Carles Dachs has just translated for the young publishing house Cráter–, László Krasznahorkai has dedicated himself to narrating the apocalypse from multiple angles and with a very particular sense of humor, which has veered from analyzing the collapse of communism to stupefaction in the face of the rise of the extreme right. The latest Nobel Prize winner in literature will share the stage with Miguel de Palol, who has also narrated situations of global collapse in novels such as The Garden of Seven Twilights (Proa, 1989) and Bootes (Navona, 2023).

In Enter the spirit (Más Libros/Anagrama), the British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad (London, 1991) "fictionalizes the possibility of carrying out a Hamlet in the West Bank, a magnificent portrait of everyday life in this territory," recalls Elisabet Goula. In his novels, Hammad "shows Palestine as the living and vibrant community that it is, with hopes and contradictions, and vindicates the power of artistic creation to resist hostile environments and imagine brighter futures. October 25 and 26, when texts by authors such as Mahmud Darwish, Gasan Kanafani, Fadwa Tuqan, Elias Khoury and Asma Azaizeh will be recited.

"Han Kang's Nobel Prize has put the international spotlight on Korean literature," comments Ester Torres-Simón, Kosmopolis' advisor on this subject. "At the festival, we wanted to offer a sampling of the country's literary production, as well as its graphic novels. They are a total of five authors who have little in common in terms of style and genre." Among them is Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, who dares to tackle delicate subjects in her books, a blend of intimate narrative and historical memory always articulated from a female perspective. The author will present a new piece at Kosmopolis. My friend Kim Jong-un (Reservoir Books, 2025).

Photographer Aleix Plademunt and writer Borja Bagunyà have been working for three years on a project that remakes the journey described in theOdyssey from Homer through the Mediterranean today, from Türkiye to Corfu, passing through Djerba, Messina, Lipari, Capri and Ceuta, among other places. The installation To be nobody It is the first taste of the work, with which the musical duo Tarta Relena has also collaborated, and reflects on what happens in moments of suspension of certain types of identity, such as those that occur when someone goes on vacation.

The effervescence of contemporary Galician culture – narrative, poetry, and music – is one of the other focal points of this edition of the festival, which will feature novelists such as María Reimóndez and Sara Guerrero, poets such as Yolanda Castaño and Ismael Ramos, and one of the country's most innovative traditional music artists, Mercedes Pe. One of the most unique events will be the one that will bring together the narrator Berta Dávila and the filmmaker Carla Simón, which has set his latest film, Pilgrimage, in Galicia, and the screenwriter Eduard Sola.

Return to Reims and Life, old age and death of a woman of the people –recently published in Catalan by Angle– narrate Didier Eribon's experience of social advancement and family estrangement, as well as his reunion with an aging and fragile mother. The French writer and intellectual will discuss two of his most notable books, accompanied by journalist Àlex Vicente.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence has raised several urgent questions regarding copyright, the writing profession, and the sustainability of working conditions in the profession. The Association of Catalan-Language Writers will dedicate a morning to discussing this issue, with the participation of translators such as Yannick Garcia and Gemma Lienas, cultural managers such as Mireia Sopena, and authors such as Míriam Cano, Maria Sevilla, and Guillem-Jordi Graells.

Kosmopolis has been, since its inception, a festival of expanded literature, which is why proposals such as the concert of Quimi Portet are welcome. The musician from Osona will review his career months after having gathered all the lyrics of his songs in Songs in beautiful Limousin (The Second Periphery, 2025).

With MausIn 1992, Art Spiegelman achieved a previously unheard-of respectability for comics as an artistic medium. The book recounted the profound and complex experience of his father's life as a victim of the Holocaust and will be one of the focal points of the conversation with Max, another cartoonist trained in the underground. Spiegelman, 77, travels little and rarely performs in public: this will be a rare opportunity to see him discuss his influential work.