Benjamin Labatut at the Onassis Stegi

Benjamin Labatut defies the confinements of categorization, creating his own, new hybrid genre that has charmed critics and readers alike. Balanced on a knife edge between scientific rigor and fantastic fiction, between the brilliant and the absurd, between the aspirational dreams and dystopic nightmares of scientific progress, Labatut’s writing forms a literary alloy that invokes awe and occasional terror, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.

Shrouded in mystery, hard to reach, and multilingually translated, Labatut has already earned wide international acclaim for his work, while his book "When We Cease to Understand the World" stood out amongst the 2021 nominations for the International Booker Prize. With his 2023 book "The MANIAC", Labatut explores, among other things, a speculative future where AI becomes self-sufficient, the ascension of a new Godhood, and humanity on the brink of self-annihilation.

Born in Rotterdam in 1980 and growing up between the Hague, Buenos Aries, and Lima, Benjamin Labatut finally settled down in Santiago, Chile, at age 13, where he lives and writes to this day. Interviews with and even photographs of Labatut are rare, as he prefers to avoid media exposure, which is common practice for contemporary book promotion. In this rare opportunity, Labatut will appear in Athens, at Onassis Stegi, in spring 2025, to talk to us about his exciting work. Benjamin Labatut’s works are available in Greek, published by DOMA Books.