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Our Man in Madrid

February–July 2011

We launch a new series, Our Man in Madrid, in which Jonathan Blitzer presents new work in Spanish by international writers coming through that literary hub. In the first installment, Venezuelan Juan Carlos Chirinos tracks the operatic last act of a despot.

Our Man in Madrid: A New Series from Words without Borders

By Jonathan Blitzer

“Madrid es un pueblo,” people here are fond of saying, their tone of paternalism matched only by pride. It’s small, but it’s ours, is more or less the idea.

February 2011

Ride of the Valkyries

By Juan Carlos Chirinos

Now the president is gulping down a pair of tranquilizers with his whiskey.

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

Beyond the Realms of Fiction: An Interview with Juan Carlos Chirinos

By Jonathan Blitzer

What began in 1997 as an academic “excursion” became a kind of immigration experience and now seems to have turned into an indisguisable exile

Translated from Spanish by the author

March 2011

The Reckoning

By Jorge Eduardo Benavides

That Presence—long feared—was once again in our midst.

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

The Delayed Arrival of the Writer: An Interview with Jorge Eduardo Benavides

By Jonathan Blitzer

I have realized that when a writer emigrates, it takes much longer for him to arrive as a writer than as a person.

Translated from Spanish by the author

April 2011

Spaniards Lost in America

By Carlos Franz

He kept the body under the counter, right where he stored his medicinal herbs.

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

A Region of the Spirit: An Interview with Carlos Franz

By Jonathan Blitzer

It is a well established fact that we know our own countries better from afar.

Translated from Spanish by the author

Multilingual

May 2011

Dos Manzanas

By Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga

And try to imagine what we will never know for sure: what old grudge (since it did not stem from us) and what precise urgency are at the root of everything that is going to happen today

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

Multilingual

Contraband Forms: An Interview with Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga

By Jonathan Blitzer

Cutting through the inane shrubbery means, first off, not writing books that aren’t necessary.

Translated from Spanish by the author

June 2011

Picture of view of downtown Albuquerque and freeway at sunset

Photo by Andreas Rasmussen on Unsplash

The Night Sucks

By Blanca Riestra

The girl with a ponytail says: “Look at the sky,” and the other says, “The sky sucks.”

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

A Tiny Repeated Gesture: An Interview with Blanca Riestra

By Jonathan Blitzer

I would like to write as if I were in a passing car, with the radio on, which is one of the most delectable sensations I know.

Translated from Spanish by the author

July 2011

The Writer of Memories

By Doménico Chiappe

I felt the arrogance with which one regards the dispossessed.

Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Blitzer

Multilingual

Living to Write: An Interview with Doménico Chiappe

By Jonathan Blitzer

Only time, the persistence of works in time, their readings after ten, fifty, or a thousand years will say if the edifice was constructed with strong, durable, or perishable materials.

Translated from Spanish by the author