Meetings with authors, open bookstores and libraries, recitals, dialogues, literary routes... On April 22, Madrid will celebrate the seventeenth edition of La Noche de los Libros, (Book Night), an annual event designed to promote reading and the rapprochement between writers and readers.

Under the slogan 'Madrid se lee" (Madrid is read): The city in books and books in the city', visitors will be able to participate in more than 350 activities, in person and online, which will be spread across the capital and surrounding municipalities.

"Madrid has someone to write about it, all those writers who - from Benito Pérez Galdós to Mercedes Soriano, from Pío Baroja, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Emilia Pardo Bazán to Julio Llamazares and so many others - made and continue to make the city a character, and its inhabitants and the places they inhabit, part of a story that never stops being told," writes Giselle Etcheverry Walker, curator of literary activities for La Noche de los Libros 2022. 

'La Noche de los Libros' will delve this year into this great shared story: "the Madrid that is written and read in the street, in the night of a city that reveals itself without shame, in its urban landscapes, in the bustle and fashions, in the faces and voices that, in the busiest streets, come to meet us with the promise of a new story to tell," adds Etcheverry. 

This year's Book Night will feature 464 authors (among them Mario Vargas Llosa, Andrés Trapiello, Manuel Vilas, Annie Ernaux and Lara Moreno), 168 cultural institutions, 181 bookstores and 115 libraries, according to the program presented by local authorities.  

The inaugural activity, scheduled for 6 pm at the Real Casa de Correos, will be a dialogue between Peruvian author and Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa and Spaniard Andrés Trapiello, titled 'La mirada quieta', the title of Vargas Llosa's latest novel. The dialogue will be a tribute to the figure of Benito Pérez Galdós and the city of Madrid, where the well-known novelist and playwright of the late 20th century lived a good part of his life.

There will also be debates revolving around the figure of women, such as the one featuring French writer Annie Ernaux and journalist and writer Berna González Harbour, and another in honor of Almudena Grandes, the Spanish writer who passed away this year. 

Throughout the night, the emblematic Puerta del Sol will be the stage for cultural activities proposed by the different bookstores, libraries and museums in the region. 

On the other hand, between April 21 and 23, the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid will host the 26th Continuous Reading of Don Quixote. 

The literary routes will focus on 'El Madrid de las escritoras: literatura, periodismo y política' and 'El Madrid Noir de Servando Rocha'.

The entire program can be consulted at the following website.