EUME
2020/ 2021

Antonio Ungar

A plena luz (In Broad Daylight)

is a Columbian writer. His novels have been translated into eight languages and his short stories have been included in more than twenty anthologies in five languages. His novel Tres ataúdes blancos, was awarded in 2010 with the prestigious Herralde Prize, was short-listed for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 2011, and is currently being adapted into a movie. Other prizes and distinctions include representing Colombia in the IWP Residence (2005), in the Granta Magazine Latin-American Anthology (2007), being second in the Courier International Prize to the best foreign book published in France (2008), and achieving the Colombian National Journalism Prize Simón Bolívar (2005). His last novel, Mírame (2019), is currently being translated into French. During the academic year 2020/21, Ungar is affiliated as a Fellow of EUME and of the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

A plena luz (In Broad Daylight)

This is a story of vengeance. Marta is a young woman from Bogotá, a large metropolis, who goes to the little village where her father has been living for some years and where he has just been killed. Very soon she understands that the region is controlled by paramilitaries, drug dealers and guerrillas. In her quest for the killers, she gets advice from three locals, but soon discovers that nobody is who they claim to be, and that help will come from the most unexpected of places. The search will transform her completely, from a law-abiding citizen to a woman with a mission in a territory where laws mean nothing. The novel will be built around two narrative lines: that of Marta in the village, and that of three murders (one in Paris, at the beginning of the novel, one in Miami, in the middle, and one in Bogotá, in the end). The reader will gradually discover why these people are being killed, who is killing them, and what is their connection with the main story.