The Palestinian writer Karim Kattan and the Tarragona-born poet and writer Pol Guasch met in Barcelona in May. Guasch then presented one of Kattan's two latest works translated into Spanish, L'Éden à l'aube (2024; El Edén al alba in the Txalaparta edition), which narrates a story of love and desire between two men traveling under a hurricane wind that buries Palestine under sand. Mutual admiration arose. Kattan has read Guasch's work, and what has fascinated him most is his poetry, specifically, La part del foc (Viena, 2021), which was awarded the López-Picó prize.

Karim Kattan (Jerusalem, 1989) is a Palestinian writer, doctor in comparative literature from Paris University, who explores through poetic fiction exile, memory, and violence, but also love and eroticism. He has lived in France since he was 18, but his family remains in Palestine. In his acclaimed debut novel, Le palais de deux collines (2021; The Palace of Two Hills in the Spanish edition published by Deleste),there is the return of an exile to his village and to the family palace full of ghosts and stories of a past that seems unreal. In L'Éden à l'aube (2024; Eden at Dawn in the Txalaparta edition) he narrates a story of love and desire between two men traveling under a hurricane wind that buries Palestine under the sand. His third novel, to be published in France in September, is even more apocalyptic.