Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and today I'm honored to be talking to Eduardo Galliano,

whose most recent book, Upside Down, Patasariba, has been translated into English, published

by Metropolitan Books.

It is a primer for the looking glass world.

And I wanted to begin by acknowledging that this book is made out of elements and texts and anecdotes and jokes and stories and reports, which are not

primarily literary. They come from all regions of the communicative world. And Mr. Gagliano

has pointed out to me that culture is not to be looked at

as an expression solely of its professional writers and artists. And I wanted to begin by speaking

about that. It's very difficult to define culture, perhaps as soon as you define culture it ceases to exist.

It's made from mystery as human life and as all expressions coming from human voices.

It's very difficult to define it. As soon as you define it, you are labeling it,

which is a very bad habit in this world at the end of a century, the beginning of another one.

This habit of having everything classified and I have always felt myself imprisoned by these classifications

and perhaps all I have written have been written in order to violate the frontiers.

I don't believe in frontiers.

Human voices are universal or have a vocation of becoming universal. So that's why my books,

...