Homage to Ricardo Piglia: Emilio Renzi's Diaries
A conversation with professor John Kraniauskas (Birkbeck College), the writer Carlos Fonseca and the critic, translator and radio host Juan Toledo.
If with Jorge Luis Borges we learned to see literature as a narrative and even as a universal game, with his successor, Ricardo Piglia, we have the opportunity to esteem the universality within the same Argentine literature. Piglia was an historian whose work can be read as a historiography of Argentine writing, rescuing authors like Macedonio Fernández and Roberto Arlt.
His literary work was wide, as it includes every field: reading, critique and writing of novels and short stories. Piglia focuses on how we can read and write after the so called Latin American Boom. In that sense, his novel Respiración Artificial is an irrefutable proof of what kind of novel must be written after Borges, Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez.
The presentation seeks to casting light on how Ricardo Piglia complements Emilio Renzi as well as clarifying the reason of his taste for detective novels –a genre that could be in danger of extinction- and some American authors. The talk will also discuss why Piglia is still so unknown outside Argentina.
John Kraniauskas is Professor of Latin American Studies at the Birkbeck University of London, co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and has authored a number of publications about cultural, political and philosophical affairs in Latin America. His proofreading and translating of Carlos Monsiváis, Mexican Postcards won him a Special Mention at the LASA 98 Bryce Wood Book Prize. Recently, he has published Políticas literarias: politica y acumulacion en la cultura latino-americana (preface by Roger Bartra), FLACSO, Mexico, 2012.
Carlos Fonseca Suárez was born in Costa Rica in 1987 and grew up in Puerto Rico. His critical works have appeared in an array of publications including The Guardian, The TLS, The White Review and Asimptote. Currently, Fonseca is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and lives in London. He has authored two books, Coronel Lágrimas (Anagrama, English translation available at Restless Books) and Museo animal (Anagrama). He was an esteemed student of Ricardo Piglia's at Princeton University (USA).
Juan Toledo is a London-based Colombian teacher, critic and writer. He is currently Head of the cultural radio station ZTR Radio, part of the cultural project El Ojo de la Cultura Hispanoamericana.
This activity is a collaboration between the Instituto Cervantes in London, El Ojo de la Cultura Hispanoamericana and ZTR Radio.
Free entry, RSVP: http://bit.ly/pigliahomage
