In literature, or in any other art, you can only do what you’re able to, not what you want. Otherwise, we’d have plenty of Machados and Guimarães.

I have a lot of trouble writing about women, about the feminine universe. Every time I try to write in a female voice, it comes out terrible. I think it’s awful. I don’t even start anymore. I identify with the masculine universe. I’m not sure where that began. I think it was in childhood; I got along well with boys. I had a punk rock band in my teens that was all boys. I watched a lot of movies, always with tough guys. I started reading literature through male authors.

And I like men. I have a very special empathy for them, not just attraction to the opposite sex, but an empathy of simply liking them. I’ve always liked being around men, hearing the sound of male voices and conversation. I’ve always found them funnier and more entertaining than women’s. When I started writing, I noticed this very strong empathy with the masculine universe. The moment I let the narrative voice loose, I’d think: “How strange, my voice only comes out like this, deep and gruff.” It’s very hard to understand where this voice, this connection, comes from.

The settings I deal with are different from those in women’s literature. There’s a convergence in women’s literature, in interests and subjects. You can notice it. Maybe you’d find them at the same afternoon tea or with the same psychoanalyst. You could put characters from books by different women authors in the same room, in the same therapist’s waiting room. You feel a convergence of stories, worlds, dramas, loves. I’m not the least bit interested in talking about erotic love, about love between man and woman, about solving my problems. Literature, for me, isn’t that world, isn’t that place. It’s something completely different.

I’m already a woman twenty-four hours a day. I want to be a little bit of a man, a little bit of a brute. I want to knock down walls, cremate bodies, slaughter pigs. I want to do something different. And I can only do that in literature, because in this life I won’t be able to do it; I don’t have that possibility. Literature gave me the possibility of being something else, of going beyond the middling plane where I live.

Even as a woman, I’m extremely limited. There are a thousand things I’d like to do as a woman, but I don’t have the physical makeup for them. Sometimes, opening a jar of hearts of palm is hard. I like dealing with my womanhood, but it limits me terribly. I see that men always go so much further. They fall, get up, keep running. They play soccer, they skateboard. Women already have certain problems. I have a certain physical fragility. I’m extremely fragile. I twist my ankle, it has to be put in a cast; I have a crooked spine, I walk crooked. I had braces. I wear glasses, I’m allergic to everything, I have intolerances, allergies. The fragility bothers me.

The best part of writing is the characters, the possibilities literature gives me to go beyond. I only write because I can go beyond. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t write. If there were a law saying I could only write about women, about my little life, I’d say: “Well, buddy, I’ll do something else, I’ll take other paths. Maybe even more feminine paths. Cooking would be far more interesting than writing only about my little routine, sorting out little problems.”

Sometimes literature goes into the field of personal problems. I have not the slightest interest in solving my problems through literature. I want to look for new problems, new questions, to go beyond. To be someone different. I wanted to be a brute. If I were a man, I’d be a brute. I’d be big and strong. I’d lay a concrete slab, take on a construction job, put up a wall. I think I’d like that. Since I can’t, I write.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I saw someone mention this author on another thread, so I looked her up and found this. Honestly, I’ve never heard a woman speaking like this. It seems like a peculiar approach to writing. Does anyone know where to start with her work?

Acción

I think the top 2 are almost certainly the Mexican Fernanda Melchor and the Chilean Benjamín Labatut.

Other contenders: Alejandro Zambra (Chile), Carlos Manuel Álvarez (Cuba), Clyo Mendoza (Mexico), Julia Kornberg (Argentina)?

Who are your top two or three?

With the new translation of Morel’s Invention coming out tomorrow I decided to list some of my most anticipated upcoming releases.

1. Morel’s Invention by Adolfo Bioy Casares (October 13, 2026)  /www.nyrb.com/products/morel-s-invention

Originally translated as The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares's novel has always been on my TBR ever since I read that Bolaño listed it when he was asked to name five books that marked his life:

“In reality the five books are more like 5,000. I’ll mention these only as the tip of the spear: Don Quixote by Cervantes, Moby Dick by Melville. The complete works of Borges, Hopscotch by Cortázar, A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole. I should also cite Nadja by Breton, the letters of Jacques Vaché. Anything Ubu by Jarry, Life: A User’s Manual by Perec. The Castle and The Trial by Kafka. Aphorisms by Lichtenberg. The Tractatus by Wittgenstein. The Invention of Morel by Bioy Casares. The Satyricon by Petronius. The History of Rome by Tito Livio. Pensées by Pascal.”

Once I saw that NYRB is publishing a new translation I used this as an excuse to wait and read this one.

1. From Julio Selected Letters of Julio Cortázar, Volume One (1937–1966) (November 3, 2026)

 https://www.nyrb.com/products/from-julio All fans of the masterpiece Hopscotch should be excited about this one.

In this first volume of letters, readers will find Cortázar, candid and mischievous, describing his life, reflecting on art, and practically bouncing with questions for his interlocutors. These letters reflect a warm spirit coupled with a uniquely inventive and daring mind. They traverse Cortázar's move from Argentina to Paris, his love affair and the first years of a lifelong friendship with Edith Aron (the inspiration for La Maga in Hopscotch).

1. Borges - Labyrinths (November 16, 2027)

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/labyrinths-selected-stories-and-other-writings/

Looks like a special edition of the absolute masterpiece and literary game changer Labyrinths. Sure I already have multiple copies but why not?

1. Vastlands: The Crossing by João Guimarães Rosa (January 19,2027)

 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Vastlands-The-Crossing/Joao-Guimaraes-Rosa/9781668091586?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=24180905191&gbraid=0AAAAADv-uEmI1dZnVu56LdQ7hvrxj77RO&gclid=CjwKCAjwwL_UBhAjEiwAEhuT5HotKbBW1zWH9jTcyfx1DazGMYPdm3pZ-Di71rRKG_B4zDYV0DayghoCFKQQAvD_BwE

 MY MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASE! A major literary event! Apparently this is the greatest Brazilian novel ever and one of the greatest works of literature of all-time!

1. Borges by Adolfo Bioy Casares (April 11, 2028)

 https://www.nyrb.com/products/borges

The entire collection was recently released in Spanish, I'm pretty sure this is just an abridged (but still 704 pages).

Over the course of their remarkable, five-decade-long friendship, Bioy Casares kept meticulous record of their energetic discourse on everything from the philosophies of authorship to the virtues of detective plots to the inner workings of sentences and of people. Devotees of police procedurals, the gothic novel, gaucho literature, and fantastic literature, they perform a mesmerizing double act, wielding their razor wit to offer blistering critiques of canonical writers such as Goethe, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, and Joyce.

Shout outs also to the news that Los Sorias will be published by Deep Vellum https://www.deepvellum.org/news/deal-announcement-deep-vellum-to-publish-alberto-laisecas-los-sorias-in-spring-2029

and a Bolaño biography will be coming out in English sometime in 2028 https://aaronshulman.substack.com/p/the-complicated-afterlife-of-roberto

Let me know what you guys are anticipating!

EDIT: I almost forgot about my current obsession, which is reading all things by Rodrigo Fresán, and the upcoming translation of his 2001 novel Mantra, to be released by Open Letter books (April, 2027). 

Nona Fernández’s literature relies on fiction to recuperate collective memory and fill in the gaps that history, the official story, leaves out, often intentionally. However, whereas The Twilight Zone and Space Invaders mainly revolve around historical actors who perpetrated the military dictatorship of Chile (1973-1990) headed by Augusto Pinochet, Fernández’s latest novel Marciano focuses on those who resisted the regime, particularly Mauricio Hernández Norambuena, a.k.a. Comandante Ramiro of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR).

“La revolución no es inocente” is a key phrase repeated throughout Marciano. With these words in mind, Nona does not glorify her subject in the novel, instead she humanizes Comandante Ramiro—the man who in 1996 escaped from Santiago’s High Security Prison, unbelievably, hanging by one hand from the basket of a helicopter—whom to many may have seemed like a superhero, villain, or some sort of alien being. In this vein, rather than write Marciano like an action flick (mind you: Nona began this project as a hired screenwriter for a TV series that eventually fell apart), Fernández provides her readers a viewing window for observing the personal life of Mauricio and the human relationships, excluded from the archive, at the heart of the FPMR.

Marciano is structured as a series of dialogues, a tangled web, in metafictional fashion, between Nona and Mauricio. In the opening pages, Mauricio poses a few questions to Nona that guide the entire narrative: “Será que la historia está subordinada a la geometría? … ¿Tiene forma una vida? ¿Cabe en una ventana?” Windows, cells, documents, books, all of these objects are geometric—mere human attempts to order reality, that which is inherently fractal. Thus, Mauricio’s questions reveal that the novel will also fail to capture the full truth, all the intricacies of his life, 17 years of which were spent in solitary confinement in cockroach-infested maximum-security prisons in Brazil. Yet still, Marciano is a masterpiece, and I can’t wait for the Anglophone world to peer through its window when it is translated into English… soon…

By the way, this photo was taken at Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi (Santiago, Chile), which was used as a prison, torture center, and execution site from 1974-1978 during the military dictatorship of Chile. To be clear: Mauricio Hernández Norambuena was never held at this prison, however, Villa Grimaldi today serves as an important site of cultural memory. Ni perdón ni olvido!

Thanks for reading! Peace!

Someone shared theirs and I felt like sharing mine. Easily my most favorite writer of all time! Nobody writes sentences more beautiful than Gabo.

Whats your favorite of these?

I’ll be leaving Uruguay soon (next stop: Buenos Aires), however, I had a great time at the 48th Feria International Del Libro de Montevideo!

One of the highlights for me was learning so much more about Uruguayan literature, which until recently was a real gap in my knowledge of Latin American literature.

In particular, I got acquainted with some of the independent presses based out of Montevideo and even got to meet some of the writers whose books I bought, including the world-renowned Fernanda Trías!

Nevertheless, I was just as excited to meet Gonzalo Baz, Dani Olivar, and Tamara Silva Bernaschina, notable contemporary Uruguayan writers who gifted me a few moments of their time! Thank you all for your warmth, patience, and willingness to speak with me at FIL!

OK, here’s my Uruguayan independent-press haul:

LA CIUDAD by Mario Levrero — Criatura Editora

GURISAS CHICAS by Dani Olivar — Criatura Editora

ANIMALES QUE VUELVEN by Gonzalo Baz — Pez en el Hielo

LOS AHOGADOS by Emanuel Bremermann — Pez en el Hielo

TEMPORADA DE BALLENAS by Tamara Silva Bernaschina — Estuario Editora

NO SOÑARÁS FLORES by Fernanda Trías — Casa Editorial HUM

Has anyone here read any of these authors? Aside from Trías, they are all new to me, but I’m excited to dive into each one of these books… sooner or later!

Aside from the classics like Mario Benedetti, Juan Carlos Onetti, Cristina Peri Rossi, and Eduardo Galeano, which other Uruguayan writers should I have on my radar?

Ramiro Sanchiz was also kind enough to spend some of his time chatting with me, and I picked up a couple of his books (thanks for signing them, Ramiro!), albeit not from Uruguayan presses, and I’m especially excited to check out LAS IMITACIONES, which was just rereleased in a special tenth-anniversary edition by Frontal Editora out of Buenos Aires.

Some Uruguayan sleepers I scored: EL FURGÓN DE LOS LOCOS by Carlos Liscano and EL GUARDESPALDAS Y OTROS CUENTOS by Nelson Marra.

Finally, I’m trying to decide if I should try to make room in my suitcase for the massive tome that is LAS CENIZAS DEL CÓNDOR by Fernando Butazzoni… has anyone here read it? If so, would you please be so kind as to tell me your thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Peace!

Tbh the jump from a casual learner to novels is humbling to say the least. Graded readers are 60 pages of someone going to the market then the next rung up is Bolaño and you're doing a chapter a fortnight with a dictionary open lol. What did work for me is shorter stuff daily, written for people from the place rather than produced for learners. a few things i've ended up using are Cronica and the long-form newspaper pieces, Unedo does a short piece a day on something cultural written by someone from the country it's about and recorded in their voice which was really practical to improve my listening. This has been helpful for me to find writers i would never find otherwise. and one final underrated trick is youtube with Spanish subs on.

I’m still putting the pieces for someone at my level and the thing that surprised me is that register matters more than difficulty. A simple piece written by an actual Mexican person taught me more usable Spanish than a harder text written to a syllabus. What did everyone else use for that middle bit?

Does this book have a slow burn beginning before it just takes off? I'm just over 100 pages in, and it hasn't really grabbed me like other books I've read this year. It's almost 600 pages, so I can see it being a slow build-up, but I'm not looking to pick it up every moment I have available like other books I've read this year. I'm not going to give up, I just want to know if the relatively uneventful beginning picks up.

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!

*I posted this in what are you reading thread, but realized maybe it goes better as a stand alone. Apologies if reposting is an annoying move--just thought it might be worth a stand alone post.--Andrew

Silencio by Clyo Mendoza. pub by Seven Stories Press. 2023. translated by Christina MacSweeney

Warning: these thoughts below are not fully edited--these are some explorations--open to counterthoughts on my liberal use of "poetry" and "poetical approach."

Silencio explores violence experienced mostly by women (and a bit children) in Southern Mexico and mainly follows the character Agueda, her mother, and those around them. It is a challenging read, both for its raw content and its approach (poetry more than narrative; image more than explanation). It is not a read for those triggered by reading about violence against women.

I think Cory Oldweiler summarized it well in _Southwest Review_

"Silencio is a collage of poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction, recounting the stories of Indigenous people, mainly women and girls, from Oaxaca, where Mendoza grew up. The book’s title and the recurrence of 'silence' in its first two chapters makes clear that Mendoza wants her readers aware of, focused on, and sitting with the silence, unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable to her readers..."

With the warning about violence said, for those who participated in the read-a-long of Autobiograph of Red in the TrueLit subreddit and were wondering how it was poetry, this may be a book to try as it, for me, clearly demonstrates how an author can employ the elements of poetry without using line breaks.

Brief aside: for me, one way I define poetry is thus: a work qualifies as poetry if it prioritizes the following:

1. creating an experience for the reader as opposed to (only) narrating a story
2. paying attention to and manipulating language so that the use of language creates an effect that somehow enhances that experience.
3. for contemporary work, this often seems to lead to a disruption of traditional narrative plot (but not always)

So, back to Silencio. Although the whole work is not necessarily a poem, it is not a prose narrative in a traditional sense. Nor is it a direct memior or reportage. It also doesn't quite seem to be literary non-fiction. Like Oldweiler says, it's collage, which to me, feels poetic in approach. This is why I think it might be a good starting point for those who might want to explore the use of poetic language and poetric approach without being caught up in "Is it poem?" "What is a line break?" "Does this count?"

The brief chapters are they themselves made up of 1-3 page pieces. Early in the book they are brief images only. Paragraph 1: A priest visits a village upon hearing that children holding a vigil for a woman who killed herself. Paragraph 2: It's noted that she is carried away in a crate, which is not standard, as shrouds are usually used. In fact, there is such a high mortality rate of mother death in childbirth that women start sewing theirs right after marrying. And that's it. The brief content, for me, makes the images have more power--allows their rawness to speak for themselves without much exposition.

It is powerful from the specific example (the suicide of the mother of the main character). It is culturally interesting that historically this happens today, something I did not know. This collaging, again, to me, is a start of the condensced nature of what poetry tries to do. Poetry (contemporary) often just does it more compactly.

Mendoza also uses languages other than Spanish (Zapotec, Isthmus Zapotec, and Tacuate). I cannot speak to the effects of using these languages since I do not speak them, but the translator's note mentions some (giving pleasure to the indigenous speakers of these languages and how the language had a relationship to nature [if I am understanding the translator's notes correctly.]). Again, this extra attention to language, for me, pushes this work, which looks like a novella on the bookstore shelf, over to the poetry section--or, if I could create one--the "Create an Experience for Me" section.

At any rate, this was a challenging short work that obviously was not comforting but I believe is important.

With Roberto Bolaño’s literary tastes as my compass, I recently picked up a number of books of Chilean poetry while visiting Santiago for a few weeks… Here’s a selection of my haul:

Poemas para combatir el calvicie by Nicanor Parra — Fondo de Cultura Económica (Chile)

Obra gruesa by Nicanor Parra — Editorial Andres Bello (Chile)

Algunos poemitas by Enrique Lihn — Editorial Popular Sonora (México)

Poesía, situación irregular by Enrique Lihn — Visor Libros (España)

doQ.mentos del anteayer by Rodrigo Lira — Alquimia Ediciones (Chile)

La ciudad y otros poemas by Gonzalo Millán — LOM Ediciones (Chile)

El árbol de la memoria y otros poemas by Jorge Teilier — LOM Ediciones (Chile)

Have you read any of these Chilean poets?

Peace!

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!

Can you name a single novelist under 35?

edit

thank you for the responses. I have a great reading list now. PS: this went way better than the 2 other lit subs i posted it in

Hello all! I’ve been reading a lot of translated literary fiction lately, mostly from Latin authors. I loved Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin, Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, and Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro.

Right now, I am reading Cathedrals by Claudia Pineiro however I would love additional recommendations that are similar to the books I’ve read.

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!