![]() ![]() ![]() Like Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad before him, he has a native speaker’s mastery of the language. That vocation makes it all the more surprising that he chose to write in English, his second language. I studied literature at the university and earned my degree quickly.” Hernán Díaz, who speaks a Spanish vernacular unmistakably rooted in Buenos Aires, is the editor of the prestigious Revista Hispánica Moderna, a century-old Spanish-language academic journal published under the auspices of Columbia University (New York). Years later, when democracy returned to Argentina, we were able to go home to Buenos Aires. They were terrible, but I always knew I would dedicate my life to literature. “That was where I started writing stories and poems. I was two years old.” Díaz flashes forward to steer the conversation to a more comfortable subject. After the 1975 coup, we went into exile in Sweden. In fact, my parents owned a bookstore, so literature was a compelling presence in my life from the beginning. Before sitting down, Argentina-born Hernán Díaz affably says, “I prefer to talk about books and literature instead of my own life.” Recognizing the unavoidable, he offers a few brief autobiographical notes. Auden, Hart Crane, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller, Paul Bowles and Norman Mailer. Our interview takes place in a secluded café behind the public library in Brooklyn Heights, a New York neighborhood that was once the home of literary giants like Walt Whitman, W. ![]()
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