Acclaimed as one of the most important Latin American novels in recent decades, Artificial Respiration is a stunning introduction for English readers to the fiction of Ricardo Piglia. Published in Argentina in 1981, it was written at a time when thousands of Argentine citizens "disappeared" during the government’s attempt to create an authoritarian state. In part a reflection on one of the most repressive and tragic times in Argentine history, this is one of those rare works of fiction in which multiple philosophical, political, and narrative dimensions are all powerfully and equally matched. As a prize winning detective novel, Artificial Respiration reaches through many levels of mystery to explore the forces that have been at play in Argentina throughout its violent history. The narrator, a writer named Renzi, begins to look for an uncle who has vanished, a man he knows only through a web of contradictory family stories and an exchange of letters. Through these letters he learns about his uncle’s research into the life of Enrique Ossario, secretary to the 19th-century Argentine dictator Rosas and spy for the dictator’s enemy. As Renzi’s search leads further into his uncle’s work and to conversations with his literary and chess-playing friends, the reader is led by Piglia to consider the nature of Argentine identity, its literature and history, and its relation, for example, to Europe, exile, and democracy. Finally, and made most vividly appreciable by the retelling of a story in which Kafka meets Hitler, it is the encounter between literature and history that is explored.

Artificial Respiration (Latin America in Translation)

Literature & Fiction

Ricardo Piglia

Contemporary

Duke University Press Books

The Absent City

Widely acclaimed throughout Latin America after its 1992 release in Argentina, The Absent City takes the form of a futuristic detective novel. In the end, however, it is a meditation on the nature of totalitarian regimes, on the transition to democracy after the end of such regimes, and on the power of language to create and define reality. Ricardo Piglia combines his trademark avant-garde aesthetics with astute cultural and political insights into Argentina’s history and contemporary condition in this conceptually daring and entertaining work.The novel follows Junior, a reporter for a daily Buenos Aires newspaper, as he attempts to locate a secret machine that contains the mind and the memory of a woman named Elena. While Elena produces stories that reflect on actual events in Argentina, the police are seeking her destruction because of the revelations of atrocities that she—the machine—is disseminating through texts and taped recordings. The book thus portrays the race to recover the history and memory of a city and a country where history has largely been obliterated by political repression. Its narratives—all part of a detective story, all part of something more—multiply as they intersect with each other, like the streets and avenues of Buenos Aires itself.The second of Piglia’s novels to be translated by Duke University Press—the first was Artifical Respiration—this book continues the author’s quest to portray the abuses and atrocities that characterize dictatorships as well as the difficulties associated with making the transition to democracy. Translated and with an introduction by Sergio Waisman, it includes a new afterword by the author.

Duke University Press

The Diaries Of Emilio Renzi

El escritor Emilio Renzi, que ha escrito una narracion conjetural de una historia que circulaba en su familia, conoce por fin al protagonista, su tio Marcelo, que vive en provincias e investiga los papeles del secretario privado de un personaje que pudo ser un heroe pero del que se sospecha que en realidad fue un traidor. Entre estos personajes y algunos otros, como un polaco tras el que se adivina la figura de Gombrowicz, se hilvana una trama detectivesca que sirve para reflexionar sobre la dolorosa historia argentina y sobre la literatura y sus mascaras. Una novela radicalmente original que, en una reciente encuesta entre escritores argentinos, ha sido elegida como una de las diez mejores de esa literatura en el siglo XX. / Emilio Renzi has written a speculative book based on a story that circulated among his family. At last he meets its protagonist, his uncle Marcelo, who lives in the countryside; a man who could have been a hero but who he suspects was a traitor. This book pieces together a plot that resembles a detective story, and serves as a reflection on the painful history of Argentina and on literature and its masks. This is a radically original novel, which in a poll among Argentinean writers, was chosen as one of the ten best works in its genre of the twentieth century.

Respiracion artificial (Spanish Edition)

Literary

Anagrama

Alqari Alakhir. Ediz. Araba

Se reproducen aqui las conferencias realizadas en Mar del Plata durante 1998 por los mas reconocidos macedonianos. En ellas se ocupan de los aspectos mas relevantes de la obra del gran escritor y pensador argentino que con su fragmentaria obra produjo un cambio sustancial en el sistema literario argentino.

Conversaciones Imposibles con Macedonio Fernandez. Primeras Jornadas de Homenaje (Spanish Edition)

Monica Bueno

Noe Jitrik

Germna Garcia

Adolfo De Obieta

Elisa Calabrese

Horacio Gonzalez

Ana Camblong

History & Criticism

Corregidor

Traducida a varios idiomas, Respiración artificial ha sido virtualmente reconocida como un clásico de la nueva literatura argentina, En una encuesta reciente realizada entre cincuenta escritores fue elegida como una de las diez mejores novelas de la historia literatura de nuestro país.

Respiracion Artificial

Editorial Sudamericana

Formas Breves

Ediciones Sed de Belleza

Las Tres Vanguardias

Editorial Eterna Cadencia

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Books by Ricardo Piglia