Santiago Amigorena’s Novel of the Shoah and Latin America

In The Ghetto Within, the Argentine novelist considers the dark shadow that the Holocaust has cast not only on Europe but also on Latin America.

Ilan Stavans

The Many Labyrinths of Alejandro Iñarritu’s Oscar-Nominated “Bardo”

Disjointed, unnerving, and divisive, Bardo challenges its viewers to make sense of it.

Ilan Stavans

Olga Tokarczuk’s Panoramic Novel of Jewish Poland

A work defined by its narrative elasticity, The Books of Jacob tells the story of a false messiah not through his eyes but through the vibrant and now lost world around him.

Ilan Stavans

The Literary Games of Fernando Pessoa

Did Pessoa truly control his alter egos? Or did his creations, in many ways, control him?

Ilan Stavans

The Dark History of Colonia Dignidad

The Netflix series A Sinister Sect examines not only the history of a German community led by a Nazi in Chile but also the relationship between Latin American governments and the far right.

Ilan Stavans

Claudio Lomnitz and the Vertigo of Translation

In his generations-spanning new book, the anthropologist tracks the story of Jewish life in Latin America through the travails of one family. 

Ilan Stavans

To Julia de Burgos

Julia de Burgos and Ilan Stavans

The Misuses of Allegory

Is José Saramago an anti-Semite?

Ilan Stavans

Familia Faces

Genealogy rules Latino literature tyrannically.

Ilan Stavans

Buffoonery of the Mundane

“Felisberto Hernández is a writer like no other,” Italo Calvino announced once, “like no European, nor any Latin American.

Ilan Stavans