The IDB Cultural Center cordially invites you to attend a lecture and book signing
with the Colombian writer
Laura Restrepo
The Lack of Memory in Latin America That Causes History to Repeat Itself
and discussion of the English translation of her latest book, No Place for Heroes  

"The past that has not been tamed with words is not memory, only a sort of spying.  So writes Laura Restrepo in her ninth novel, No Place for Heroes, (Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday 2010) and one can almost see her wrangling the unbroken beast of history…  Long considered one of the foremost Latin American writers of our time, the Colombian author shifts her attention south to Argentina in this luminous and delightful novel." - San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 2010.

Here Restrepo navigates the perilous terrain of a mother-son relationship against the historical backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War, an epoch marked by military rule, a fertile underground resistance and hundreds of thousands of desaparecidos, people plucked from their lives and vanished forever.  Lorenza, the protagonist, is a Colombian who writes books and newspaper articles and travels from country to country following assignments and lovers with her son Mateo in tow.  When the novel opens in the 1990s, mother and son embark on a life-changing journey to Buenos Aires, where Mateo was born during the dictatorship years.  They've come searching for his Argentine father, Ramón, a former leader of the resistance who has been absent from Mateo's life since the young man was two years old.

All of Restrepo's novels… reflect her preoccupation with social, political, and economic issues, and No Place for Heroes is no different.  But this novel, deftly translated from Spanish by Ernesto Mestre-Reed, has a more tantalizing back story… - Miami Herald, July 18, 2010.
Internationally acclaimed for the virtuosity and power of her fiction, Laura Restrepo (Bogota, 1950) is the bestselling author of prizewinning novels published in over twenty languages.  Her awards include the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize (Mexico) and the Prix France Culture (France) for The Angel of Galilea, 1997;  the Juan de Sanclemente Award  (Spain) for Leopard in the Sun, 2002; the VII Premio Alfaguara de Novela (Spain) and the Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy) for Delirium, 2004, a novel that was also shortlisted for the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France); and she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2007.  Currently she is Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Enrique V. Iglesias Auditorium - Inter-American Development Bank - 1330 New York Avenue NW 
 Washington, DC   Metro Center, 13th Street exit - FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - PHOTO ID REQUIRED
  iadb.org/cultural   202.623.3558   Books in English and Spanish will be sold at the event. 
The lecture will be in English.    2011- Inter-American Year of Culture