When Hugo Chávez came to power, María Elena Morán (Maracaibo, 37 years old) was 13 years old.

At the time she entered the university, the Venezuelan revolution was at its peak: she had gone through the climaxes of the attempted coup and the oil strike. A Journalism student, she supported the Government as a citizen, happy to be living the opportunity to have the rebels in power, at a time when, for her, there was a certain promise on the horizon.

Today, this young Venezuelan writer living in Brazil refers to the situation in her native country as "failure." This disappointment is something that she shares with Nina, the protagonist of her novel ‘Volver a cuándo,’ which has won the 2022 Café Gijón Award and has just been published by Siruela.

Continue reading here