Reyes Monforte’s latest novel, Postales del Este, is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp in the midst of World War II. In September 1943, the young Ella arrives from the Darcy internment camp in France. Maria Mandel and Josef Mengele discover that she speaks several languages and her handwriting is impeccable, so they assign her to be the copyist for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s Orchestra as well as to Kanada Block, the warehouse where all of the belongings of the detainees were classified. She comes across postcards and photographs that the prisoners carried in their luggage and decides to write the names of those murdered so no one forgets who they were. This novel about memory and identity is the eighth for this writer and journalist who came to the fore in the field of literature with Trapped by Love (Un burka por amor), which has over 60 editions and was turned into a television series reaching an audience of over 4.5 million viewers. She would later publish Amor cruel, La rosa escondida, La infiel, Besos de arena, Una pasión rusa (for which she was bestowed the Alfonso X el Sabio historic novel award ) and La memoria de la Lavanda, which hit the best-seller lists. As a journalist, she started out in Luis del Olmo’s Protagonistas show and has worked for Onda Cero and Punto Radio stations as well as on various television programmes. She has a column in La Razón newspaper.
She speaks with Jesús García Calero, culture writer, Culture Editor for ABC daily and author of Don Juan contra Franco.
In case of rain, the event will take place at the same time in Hotel Palacio San Facundo (Plaza San Facundo, 4)
Photography of Reyes Monforte © Paco Navarro, courtesy of Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial
Photography of Jesús García Calero: © Jeosm
