And this Sunday came, the last day of the 2015 International Book Fair of Venezuela; but closure can not be perceived in the atmosphere. On the contrary, eyes, ears and even the skin witness the avalanche of people visiting the fair, hoping perhaps to perform the miracle of postponing, by the force of their presence, the announced end. As for the Venezuelan people, who every year expect anxiously the FILVEN, the curtain drop of the fair represents a so heartfelt loss as death. How can anyone understand that a place where happines may be found among books, among talks with different accents and among rythms at different tempos must come to an end? Fortunately, the National Book Center (Cenal, in Spanish) has been working for 11 years now to soothe such a great loss, since the FILVEN gets its gypsy tent on to take the same joy sown in the Caracas cultural axis to the rest of the national territory. Meanwhile we all await for the Earth to complete another lap around the sun to be part once again of this great reading party.

Teatro y sociedad, from Cesar Rengifo, is the new book published by the Biblioteca Ayacucho, as part of the Collection Claves de America, which was presented in the framework of the closure of this 11th edition of the FILVEN. The event was attended by the daughters of this year’s guest of honor, Diana y Flerida Rengifo, as well as by an audience who expected to listen to the speeches of professors Humberto Orsini and Orlando Rodriguez on this book, which is a compilation of some of the most important drama and essay works by Cesar Rengifo, preceded by a critical study. The publication of Teatro y sociedad aims at vindicating the literary work of a man as Cesar Rengifo who was, according to Orsini, a “master who taught as he spoke”, and who was also convinced that theater was the perfect means to denounce the uncertain conditions Venezuela has been subject to from the Spanish conquest itself and, therefore, for the rise of awareness and transformation of the Venezuelan people. In the opinion of several critics, Rengifo’s work is essential in our time, as it addresses all the universal topics regarding humankind and Venezuela in his theater works, even his formal structure, which leads to give a look back to the past, as the only way to understand and analyze the current situation, to subsequently plan the development of the country, to which Rengifo left many keys throughout his pages.

This homage, in the way of a book, paid to master Cesar Rengifo bids farewell, for now, to the 2015 FILVEN, reminding us that this reading party, where everybody without any distinctions whatsoever reads now at the same rythm, never ends in the Land of Simon Bolivar.