Never Did the Fire

Diamela Eltit is one of Latin America’s most daring writers. During the Pinochet dictatorship, she participated in the collective CADA, staging art actions against the dictatorship, and publishing her first novels to acclaim. She is currently the Distinguished Global Professor of Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU. She lives in Chile and New York.Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and actual human translator. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award and been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, among many others. His translations for Charco Press include novels from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. He is the author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary .

Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize (Shortlist)"Never Did the Fire will be a first-rate literary experience for any reader." —El País"One of the greatest merits of Diamela Eltit’s work is the way she narrates failure from the interior of her language." —Letras Libres************Praise for Diamela EltitGuggenheim Fellowship, 1985Prize José Nuez Martín, 1995 for Los vigilantesNominated to Altazor Award 2001 in the category of literary essay with Emergencias. Escritos sobre literatura, arte y políticaPrize Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso 2010Nominated to Altazor Award 2011 with the novel with Impuesto a la carneFinalist in the Prize Rómulo Gallegos 2011 with Impuesto a la carneFinalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature 2012Altazor Award 2014 in the fiction category for Fuerzas especialesSimón Bolívar Professor at University of Cambridge (2014)National Prize for Literature (Chile), 2018"Her novels are radical projects that dispute the public space, the national interpretation and the role of genres under authoritarian conditions. (...) Her writing has an avant-gardist’s freedom of forms, a political reaffirmation of margins, and an exploratory and rebellious edge." Julio Ortega, BOMB magazine‘One of the most brilliant literary voices in the region (…). Eltit writes furiously.’BBC Mundo