Having dinner with Antonio Skármeta...

Yesterday was one of those very awaited days for Literature lovers... the winners of two of the most important Literary Prizes were announced: the Goncourt and the Renaudot.

The Prix Goncourt was finally awarded to "La Carte et le Territoire" by Michel Houellebecq, a huge French writer also known for "Plateforme" and "La possibilité d'une île." It's been a while since critics were claiming this award for him and this time they were heard. The book, which I've already read, is extremely interesting.

The Prix Renaudot was given to Virginie Despentes, author of "Apocalypse bébé," a pseudo-thriller, really catching. Virginie Despentes is considered the rebel of Contemporary Literature and she won this award with full support of the critics. And it was thanks to some friends of mine that I was invited to a dinner held in her honor at the Hotel Lutetia, and it was thanks to my Spanish that I found myself seated next to Antonio Skármeta. The Chilean author of "Ardiente Paciencia," which inspired the movie "Il Postino" (starring Philippe Noiret and Massimo Troisi), is visiting Paris to promote his latest work: "Un padre de película," now soon to be released in its French version.

It was such a pleasure to spend the evening next to him and I took the chance to "shoot" him with my many questions. He turned out to be a charming man with a great disposition to share a conversation.

He told me that apart from being a writer, he's always dreamed of becoming an actor and that he asked for a small role when the shooting of another movie based on a novel of his, "El Baile de la Victoria" (directed by Fernando Trueba and starring Ricardo Darín), began. He told me, when I asked him how he realized he wanted to be a writer, that it was while reading the Martín Fierro (which he still remembered, for he did tell me some of its verses) in primary school in Buenos Aires, that he fell in love with Poetry and Literature. After those years on an Argentine school, he went to college in Chile, then studied Philosophy in USA and then was forced to exile in Berlin, from where he returned as Chile's Ambassador in 2000... Such a life left behind and such a life waiting ahead... projects, books to write, movies and an Opera based on "Il Postino" with Plácido Domingo, to be premiered in Paris in 2011... 

I spent a wonderful time with a unique person...

How lucky I am to speak Spanish...!!