As promised last week, my list of picks for Ficciones, the 2011 Argentina Reading Challenge. The challenge starts next week, but you can join at any time. I’m teaching all Argentine plays this quarter, and re-reads count, but it seems like cheating to just upload my syllabus. So these are my choices so far, in no particular order. I may amend the list as the year rolls along. I look forward to hearing about what others are reading, too!
- Trafalgar, by Angélica Gorodischer. I’ve just begun work on a translation of another of Gorodischer’s books–Cómo triunfar en la vida–and this is one I haven’t read.
- Buenos Aires in Translation: a collection of four recent plays translated by Jean Graham-Jones. More on the plays one-by-one as I read them.
- I was going to read Steps Under Water, by Alicia Kozameh (English translation by David E. Davis), because I heard her give an amazing reading a number of years ago, when a colleague invited her to campus. She was a little thrown by the silence in the Q & A; we were speechless, still absorbing. But in assembling this list, I find a more recent book, also in translation and one I was unaware of: 259 Leaps, the Last Immortal, translated by Clare Sullivan. I’ll read that one.
- Moira Sullivan, by Juan José Delaney. One of his stories is included in the October 2010 Words without Borders issue, Beyond Borges–if you haven’t yet, check it out [here]–and this sounded intriguing. I’ve been reading plays about Italian immigration to Argentina. Delaney’s work takes up the Irish experience.
- Los crímenes de Oxford, by Guillermo Martínez. Another Words without Borders tip.
- And back from “beyond” to Borges, with On Writing in the new Penguin Classics edition edited by Suzanne Jill Levine.
And to all, a good read!