The Diaries of Emilio Renzi ─ Formative Years

The highly anticipated, autobiographical life’s work from the visionary Argentine novelist who brought Latin American letters out from Borges’s shadow and into the postmodern era bookended by Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace.

The source of wide speculation since its conception, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi was begun some fifty years ago and completed in a frantic flurry as the Argentine author’s body shut down from Lou Gehrig's Disease. In Formative Years, the first installment of an ambitious trilogy compiled from 327 secret notebooks, Piglia chronicles in minute detail the intellectual and emotional life of Emilio Renzi, his fictional alter ego—a la Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman—as he comes into his role as a reader and writer. Alongside his desires and anxieties, first loves and tussles with his tyrannical father, we get eye-opening perspectives on the crucial events in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Above all, The Diaries comprise a celebration of reading as a religious, existential activity, with incisive insights into the giants of twentieth-century world literature from Borges to Cortázar, Proust to Hemingway, Kafka to Camus.

A career-capping landmark a lá Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions and a semi-autobiographical fiction in the tradition of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Ricardo Piglia’s final testament is a comprehensive and a shining example of how one can transform their life with and into narrative. Long awaited by anyone who has read Piglia’s mind-bending novels and stories, and a necessary introduction for anyone who has not, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi presents English readers with an essential part of the global canon.

Ricardo Piglia (Buenos Aires, 1940–2017), professor emeritus of Princeton University, is unanimously considered a classic of contemporary Spanish-language literature. He published five novels, including Artificial Respiration, The Absent City, and Target in the Night, as well as collections of stories and criticism. Among the numerous prizes he received were the Premio de la Crítica, Premio Rómulo Gallegos, Premio Bartolomé March, Premio Casa de las Américas, Premio José Donoso, and Premio Formentor de las Letras.

Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into a dozen languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. He hosted the syndicated PBS television show Conversations with Ilan Stavans. He is a cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, and Oxford.

Robert Croll is a writer, translator, musician and artist originally from Asheville, North Carolina. His fascination with translation began during his undergraduate studies at Amherst College, where he began translating short stories, focusing particularly on the work of Julio Cortázar. He currently resides in Massachusetts.