Latin American literatures

‘You’re meeting the FIFA of Argentine literature,’ one young Buenos Aires poet said: ‘Watch out she doesn’t sue you.’ María Kodama gave me the best part of three hours of her time, describing her life with Jorge Luis Borges and discussing his work. Her generosity and warmth were at odds with everything I’d ever read or heard about her.

‘Here, nothing is sacred; everything is corruptible.’ The term ‘dirty realism’ was coined by critic Bill Buford in 1983, in reference to the short fiction of what he thought of as ‘a new generation of American authors.’ The dirty realist canon, now encompasses a diverse range of cultures and languages, including the Hispanophone world. Alice Whitmore on Guillermo Fadanelli and the rise of realismo sucio.

At the conclusion of Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction: An Expanding Universe, Chris Andrews captures the tension between the public articulation of Bolaño’s now canonical status and the almost inexhaustible fascination he provokes. Admitting that his own book of criticism is participating in the ‘process of monumentalization’ that has been going on around Bolaño virtually since his death, Andrews also reminds us of the ‘incalculably diffusive’ effects of Bolaño’s work.