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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.
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The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years | 