He is a psychopedagogue and university professor, but he had an unresolved concern: he wanted to write a book and in it, tell a story. Through these coincidences, he crossed paths with the protagonist of his novel. He ran into Elena in a life cycle and decided that she would embody her character, as real as it was cruel: a woman survivor of the dictatorship, kidnapped and detained in the clandestine center El Vesubio.
“Little by little he told me his story, we talked and I learned about his adolescence and his first years at university,” commented the author of the novel “Las Comidas Negras”, Ezequiel Farías, in an interview with Diario RIO NEGRO. Elena currently lives in Buenos Aires.
«I was also very interested in the protagonist in the figure of a woman, who puts her body in the dictatorship with a pregnancy, with her partner, with her arrest, kidnapping and torture. It was something very enriching,” said Farías, who at 34 years old is going to exhibit at the International Book Fair in Buenos Aires that opened yesterday.
In 162 pages, the work is of a historical genre and has cultural and social nuances. It captivates readers with its energetic and profound account of the events during the 1976 coup d’état.
Due to his profession, Ezequiel has a special interest in the issue of learning and education. Through Elena, he saw how the desire to learn survives and continues to manifest itself in human beings after having lived and gone through such distressing and traumatic situations. What was the military dictatorship like?
“I am a son of democracy,” he said, and because of that curiosity and thirst for memory, is that it proposed to travel in time and space through the history of its protagonist to investigate the features of that dark era within Buenos Aires itself.
“I did all the research in the places where Elena traveled, I was able to be in what was the clandestine detention center, which today is ruins”
Ezequiel Farías, author of the novel “Las Comidas Negras” by Roca.
«I was able to chat with other survivors of the time, I was able to be in the basic unit where (Elena) was active in her neighborhood”; He said still enthusiastically and with a hint of pride. In the basic units, boys and girls gathered and went out to educate the neighborhoods about literacy. “Obviously it is a novel full of politics due to the time and the struggles of those years,” Ezequiel unraveled in the interview.
“I was interested in being able to portray the chaotic Buenos Aires of those years”he said and he did it with great detail, with sensory marks, through the 162 pages of this novel that has already managed to reach a dozen foreign countries, directly from Río Negro.
His intention was always to tell a story. One of the many that exist of the victims of the last military dictatorship. And she didn’t think she would go that far.
Many passages and details of the period were portrayed in his novel with condiments that perhaps no one knew and that resulted from his work in the field. This is how he recounts the appearance of the journalist and cartoonist Héctor Oesterheld, author of “El Eternauta”, in the El Vesubio detention center.
The name of the work “The Black Foods” resulted from the journey itself. With the flow of writing, Ezequiel realized that a gastronomic reference appeared in every chapter, be it food, drink, candy, meals of the time.
“Then I started thinking about the food as an excuse to gather at a table, with family, with friends. And those tables began to be increasingly absent of participants, because of all these people whose whereabouts are unknown to this day.. Hence the title, alluding to the fact that some of the gastronomic communion in those years could not be given with happiness,” explained the author. Then towards the end, the lack of food, the limitation of access already in detention.
The work It was published in 2023 and published in December to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the return to democracy.. “I think that gave value and drive to the work itself,” she said, and it was partly what catapulted her to the International Book Fair in Buenos Aires. The work is already circulating in European countries such as Canada, Sweden, Spain, Germany.
He Saturday, May 4 at 6:30 p.m., Ezequiel exhibits at the fair, in the Blue Pavilion, representing his city and his province. He will share space with authors such as Florencia Bonelli, María Cristina Pérez, Martin Kohan and NIK.
His first literary work
“The Black Foods” is his first published novel, his first fiction. Ezequiel had already done academic work, but had not turned to the literary genre until now. For him, what he has harvested so far was unimaginable and he is deeply grateful.
«Many times one does not see the significance of the things one does, what one writes, what one publishes. But now I’m realizing that yes, that “They have a very strong arrival, they have a very high reach and they have a very big responsibility,” He pointed out a few days before traveling to the exhibition.
«When I found out that I was going to the Book Fair, all I wanted was for my city to be named, for Roca to be on the billboards in Buenos Aires, for it to be known that the productions from the interior have value and recognition»
Ezequiel Farías, author of the novel “Las Comidas Negras” by Roca.
His belonging to Roca, his beloved city, is one of the most rewarding things you can bring to the big city.
Who is Ezequiel Farías
He is 34 years old, he was born in 1989 in Bahía Blanca, but when he was one year old he moved to Roca with his family. For many years he has claimed to be a “roquense”. Psychopedagogist by profession and works as a university professor. He worked for many years in the fields of education and sports.
The son of teachers, reading marked his childhood from minute zero. “He is a lover of literature and brave in writing,” reads his biography. He is self-taught in historical research
The International Book Fair
It is the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world and is among the five most important in the world, along with those in Frankfurt, Guadalajara, Paris and BookExpo América, in the United States. This year it will be held at the La Rural Fairgrounds, like every year.
Created in 1975, the fair ands organized by the El Libro Foundation, a non-profit civil entity created by the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE), also organizer of the Children’s and Youth Book Fair.
YesIt was urged under the premise of bringing together, in the same area, readers and authors, as well as editors, booksellers, distributors, educators, librarians and scientists. Annually, more than 1.2 million visitors attend.
