Martin Kohan – författare

New York, 1923, the Argentine Luis Angel Firpo, called the Wild Bull of the Pampas, knocks out of the ring the American Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world. In Buenos Aires, the match is transmitted on the radio and Firpo proclaimed world champion. However, the referee does not count the time outside the ring. Dempsey comes back and knocks the challenger out. The Wild Bull of the Pampas will have been world champion for only 17 seconds.Trelew, Patagonia, 1973: to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the local paper, the sports journalist recalls this mythical match. The head of the cultural section celebrates the first performance of Mahler''s First Symphony in the Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires conducted by Richard Strauss.In addition to these two great events of the 14th of September 1923 there is also a man found hanged in a hotel room: it is never known whether murder or suicide caused his death. Classical music, sport and crime come together to recreate the past in a disturbing investigation that questions the role of the media in the construction of popular culture.

A school assistant in Buenos Aires'' most prestigious state school, Maria Teresa Cornejo''s job is to keep the students in line. Suspecting that some of them are smoking in the school toilets, Maria Teresa takes to spying on them urinate - an activity she gets pleasure from listening to. Found out by her supervisor Senor Biasutto, she is not fired but forced into sexual collusion with him.In this society all appears fair and liberal but within there is brutal repression and the teachers including Señor Biasutto draw up black-lists of candidates for torture. As tense and uncompromising as a novel by Elfriede Jelinek, School for Patriots powerfully shows how in a dictatorship the political and the sexual interact.

Brutal and overwhelming, Confession wrestles with the legacy of Argentina’s past and the passions of one young girl.When Mirta López looks out the dining room window, she sees a slim, self-possessed older boy on his way back from school. It’s 1941 in provincial Argentina, and the sight has awakened in her the first uncertain, unnerving vibrations of desire. Naturally, she confesses. But she cannot stop herself.Over thirty years later, in 1977, that same young man is a general, leading the ruling military junta of a country, and a cell of young revolutionaries plot an audacious attack on him, and the regime.Writing from the present into the past, Martín Kohan maps the contours of Argentina’s 20th century, but finds his centre in one woman – devout, headstrong, lit up with ideas of right and wrong – not the grand historical figures of her lifetime’s omnipresent, brutalizing history. And yet, there is great beauty in Confession , its decades and landscapes, and the legacy of love and guilt, pieties religious and civic, that play out in one family and against the background of dictatorship’s traumas.

Brutal and overwhelming, Confession wrestles with the legacy of Argentina’s past and the passions of one young girl.When Mirta López looks out the dining room window, she sees a slim, self-possessed older boy on his way back from school. It’s 1941 in provincial Argentina, and the sight has awakened in her the first uncertain, unnerving vibrations of desire. Naturally, she confesses. But she cannot stop herself.Over thirty years later, in 1977, that same young man is a general, leading the ruling military junta of a country, and a cell of young revolutionaries plot an audacious attack on him, and the regime.Writing from the present into the past, Martín Kohan maps the contours of Argentina’s 20th century, but finds his centre in one woman – devout, headstrong, lit up with ideas of right and wrong – not the grand historical figures of her lifetime’s omnipresent, brutalizing history. And yet, there is great beauty in Confession , its decades and landscapes, and the legacy of love and guilt, pieties religious and civic, that play out in one family and against the background of dictatorship’s traumas.

Brutal y sobrecogedora, una novela con la dictadura argentina como telón de fondo.Tres historias que forman parte de una misma historia. En 1941, en una ciudad de provincias argentina, una niña confiesa a un sacerdote los primeros y difusos impulsos sexuales que nota en su cuerpo, relacionados con la atracción que siente por un joven apellidado Videla que pasa cada día bajo su ventana. En 1977 un grupo de jóvenes revolucionarios prepara un atentado en un aeródromo para liquidar a un Videla que ya no es joven y es conocido por todos. Y, por último, una anciana –la niña de la primera historia– juega una partida de cartas con su nieto, que ha ido a visitarla a la residencia donde pasa sus días, y entre jugada y jugada le cuenta lo que le sucedió a su hijo, el padre del chico, en lo que resulta una nueva confesión. Tres historias y tres tiempos que se entretejen para forjar una única historia. Tres historias que hablan de dolor, culpa y confesiones.Una novela sobrecogedora y deslumbrante, construida con una brillantísima arquitectura que le permite al autor penetrar hasta la médula de las historias –de la historia– que nos relata.Brutal and overwhelming, Confession wrestles with the legacy of Argentina’s past and the passions of one young girl.There are mysteries in the world of man, just as there are in the Kingdom of God, and that they too, albeit quite differently, are unfathomable.When Mirta López looks out the dining room window, she sees a slim, self-possessed older boy on his way back from school. It’s 1941 in provincial Argentina, and the sight of the Videla’s eldest son has awakened in her the first uncertain, unnerving vibrations of desire. Naturally, she confesses. But she cannot stop herself. Thirty years later, Videla is a general, leading the ruling military junta, and a cell of young revolutionaries plot an ingenious attack on him, and the regime. Writing from the present into the past, Martín Kohan maps the contours of Argentina’s 20th Century, but finds his center in one woman—devout, headstrong, lit up with ideas of right and wrong—not the grand historical figures of her lifetime’s omnipresent, brutalizing history. “There is an art to keeping lives constant, not allowing them to be altered by facts that are merely external.” And there is great beauty in Confession , its decades and landscapes, and the legacy of love and guilt playing out in one family and against the background of dictatorship’s traumas.

Publicado por primera vez en 1977, este libro constituye uno de los trabajos más relevantes sobre la obra del ya clásico escritor uruguayo y sin duda una muestra contundente del talento crítico de Josefina Ludmer.Pero al mismo tiempo, refleja uno de los modos de leer de los años setenta, "la teoría del texto en su variante produccionista (...) una crítica militante que no necesita separar política y literatura porque el texto las funde"; "en el texto está el significante de la lingüística, el deseo y el goce del psicoanálisis, y la producción y la revolución del marxismo", señala la autora en el prólogo a esta segunda edición.El texto no es la obra y se produce en el trabajo crítico, dirán estas páginas, donde dos escrituras en proceso se entrelazan. A partir de La vida breve, Ludmer analizará cómo el propio relato despliega sus condiciones de producción; en Para una tumba sin nombre buscará la matriz del texto, el núcleo que lo genera, y en la lectura de La novia robada intentará mostrar cómo la lectura de un texto de Faulkner produce la escritura de otro (el de Onetti), en un uno a uno que define la práctica crítica de la época.

Hay algo de equívoco en cualquier consideración que se haga sobre la cuestión de la ciudad en Benjamin, porque Benjamin no ha construido un único modo de pensar las ciudades, ni tampoco se ha ocupado de una única ciudad. Esa tendencia a la unificación implica fatalmente una simplificación del asunto.Por lo general, cuando se habla de la obra de Walter Benjamin aparecen inevitablemente determinadas nociones como la del flâneur, o la del fin de la experiencia, o la del shock, propias de los textos que escribió sobre París. Sin embargo, si bien los escritos parisinos son centrales en sus teorizaciones, no son los únicos ni son homogéneos.A partir de una inteligente y minuciosa relectura de las preocupaciones estéticas y políticas de Benjamin, Martín Kohan arma un mapa que une cuatro puntos cardinales fundamentales en la vida y los textos de este filósofo clave del siglo xx: París, Moscú, Nápoles y Berlín. Justamente recorriendo este mapa, Kohan reflexiona sobre los cafés, la experiencia, la tecnología, el exilio, los amores, la infancia y construye un libro imprescindible no solo para analizar el pensamiento benjaminiano, sino sobre todo para repensar la ciudad en nuestros días.