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Lucía Puenzo Argentina
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Lucía
Puenzo, born in 1976, has a degree in Literature and studied at the National
Film Institute (INCAA) in Buenos Aires. She is a script writer for film and TV
and has written feature films, documentary films and mini-series. In 2010,
Lucía Puenzo was selected for the first-ever issue Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists of the prestigious English
literary magazine Granta.
Ismael, La Enana and Ajo are too young to be
arrested as burglars. An open window in the bathroom, a frightened cat, a faint
smell of garlic: These are the only traces left by the best break-in gang in
Buenos Aires. Only weeks later do the residents notice that some items are
missing - clothing, jewellery and money. A security guard is the only one who
knows who the invisible thieves are: a couple of teenagers and a six-year-old
living in an abandoned railway carriage. They have never seen the sea until
they take on an ominous assignment on the swanky Uruguayan coast: they are to
clear out nine luxury villas, part of a plot in which the three are only
peripheral figures. For who knows when invisible people disappear?
Fast-paced, Lucía Puenzo tells in her new novel of
three outsiders who can rely only on themselves. Until the dramatic end, The Invisibles (“Los Invisibles”)
plumbs the depths of wealthy society, which defends its privileges ruthlessly
and leaves the dirty work to others.
Powerful
IndieWire
Wakolda is a highly intelligent drama about the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's
exile in Patagonia. While continuing his research into racial purity , Mengele gains the trust of the midget Lilith. The
girl soon starts to feel flattered by his attention for herself and her doll
Wakolda, and does not discover his real intentions until the very
end … This cleverly plotted novel succeeds in unmasking Mengele through his
actions and his cruel concept of humankind.
Simply brilliant! Only
rarely has anyone looked into Mengele and his like-minded followers as
impressively as Lucía Puenzo does.
Der
Spiegel
The relationship
between the German doctor and the Argentine girl are among the very best, the
most delicate and the most deeply taboo in contemporary literature.
Süddeutsche
Zeitung
Puenzo creates an
eerie world of family secrets and state lies that grows increasingly scary.
The
New York Times about the movie
Wakolda is an
extraordinary novel.
Le
Figaro
The Lobster’s
Fury (“La furia de
la langosta”) is told through the eyes of
eleven-year-old Tino. His father Razzani, a powerful manager of a large
financial empire with political connections, is suddenly persecuted by the
media and the justice system. While Tino makes great efforts to understand what
is going on around him, he is condemned to witness his world collapsing.
Lucía Puenzo narrates with delicacy.
Tendencia
This novel
again shows Lucía Puenzo’s skill as a narrator and her dexterity in creating
strong atmospheres and powerful images.
Clarín
The Curse of Jacinta Pichimahuida (“La maldición de Jacinta Pichimahuida”) is
based on true events, which triggered a scandal in Buenos Aires in 2004. It is
a harsh criticism of the media, and in view of certain television programmes,
for which children and teenagers are recruited to boost viewing figures, only
too topical. And yet, Lucía Puenzo’s novel is also a beautiful love story: That
of Pepino and Twiggy, and of him and his father, whom he finally rescues from
his mother’s obsessions and takes into his care.
As Pepino and Twiggy meet on the
coach from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata, both fall in love for the first time,
discovering a world they had not dared to hope for. Yet the past seems
insurmountable, the two of them fallen out and lonely existences at the age of
thirty, victims of their ambitious parents and messed up careers. One night
Pepino thinks he recognises Santa Cruz on the street, although it had been a
while since he had been ceremoniously buried. Naked and out of his mind, he
runs onto the street, desperately collecting the last scraps of a manuscript
that he believes to be the screenplay of his future.
When he abandons Twiggy for a whole
night because he runs into Jacinta by chance, her latest glimmer of hope
evaporates. She signs on as a porn actress, while Pepino is caught up in a
swirl of deaths of former soap actors.
9 Minutos captivates the reader by its rapid
tempo and scenically structured chapters. It’s all haywire in the life of the
five protagonists, who take turns in telling their part of the story, whilst
one of them, the recently sacked television presenter Iván, dares to take his
first skydive, a free fall of nine minutes. The marriage of Iván and Uma is
about to fail as Iván finds documents which convince him that Uma’s affair as a
student with the charismatic university professor Vinelli covertly smouldered
on for all these years. Their two voices are joined by those of the
twelve-year-old son Tiano, the gay family friend of the Buba’s and a young
female photographer.
In both novels Lucía Puenzo knows to entertain and simultaneously
introduce alternative relationship and family models with great implicitness.
The Fish
Child (“El niño
pez”) tells
of the relationship between two girls of very different backgrounds. Lala is a
teenager who lives in an upper-class neighbourhood of Buenos Aires and
discovers her love for Guayi, a seventeen-year-old maid working in her house.
They plan a future together near the Ypacaraí Lake, where Guayi comes from. As
Lala discovers that her father, the influential intellectual Brontë, is
sleeping with the girl, she hands him a glass of poisoned milk. The day after
his death Guayi disappears and Lala sets off to the lake with her dog Serafín,
the narrator of the novel.
From the metropolis the bus rumbles out into a Latin America - the story is conceivably a road movie – where archaic elements coexist with shrill modernity. Lala digs into Guayi’s past: her first love, a town boy who is now the most famous actor of Paraguayan television, her pregnancy, and the legend of a fish boy who guides the drowned to the bottom of the lake. Agile, sordid and fun too, Lucía Puenzo’s first novel surprises by an individual pace of prose and the intelligence of its writing.
Lucía Puenzo weaves a densely packed tale about a plot filled with
crazy sensuousness, brutality, dejection and secrets. The Fish Child is like a
violent phantom chase. Incredibly sweet, infinitely cruel.
Le Monde
The beginnings and ends of the chapters are written with such care!
Their vigour is impressive.
Daniel Scarfó
A strange mixture of fury, passion and
sensibility.
La Nación
There is a promising future for her.
Screen
Her narrative élan is absolutely rousing.
Der Spiegel
Rights:
Novels:
The Invisibles (”Los invisibles“)
Buenos Aires: Tusquets 2018, 196 p.
English sample translation available
France: Stock ● Germany: Wagenbach 2018
Wakolda
Buenos Aires:
Emecé/Planeta 2011, 2013, 2014, 160 p.
Film
rights sold, co-production by Historias Cinematográficas, Pyramide, Wanda
Visión and Dreamers Joint Venture, presented at
Cannes, released in September 2013
Brazil:
Gryphus 2014 ● France:
Stock 2013 ● Germany: Wagenbach 2012, pb
2013 ● Hungary: Európa 2014 ● Italy:
Guanda
2014, pb 2015 ● Mexico: Tusquets
2015 ● Norway:
Gyldendal 2013 ● Poland: Replika
2014 ●
Spain: Duomo 2014 (avail.) ● Turkey:
Dogan 2015 ● USA:
Hesperus Press 2014
The Lobster’s Fury (”La furia de
la langosta“)
Buenos
Aires: Mondadori 2010, 229 p.
France:
Stock 2012 ● Spain: Duomo 2011(avail.)
The Curse of
Jacinta Pichimahuida (“La maldición de
Jacinta Pichimahuida”)
Buenos Aires: Interzona 2007, Emecé/Planeta 2013, 304 p.
France:
Stock 2011
●
Germany:
Wagenbach 2010
9 Minutos
Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo 2005, Emecé/Planeta 2013, 176 p.
The Fish Child (”El niño pez“)
Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo 2004, Emecé/Planeta
2013, 160 p.
Film directed by Lucía Puenzo,
produced by Luis Puenzo and Wanda Visión. Presented at the Berlinale 2009
Brazil: Gryphus 2009 ● France: Stock 2010 ● Germany: Wagenbach 2009 ● Italy: La Nuova Frontiera 2009
●
Romania: Univers 2011 ● Spain: Caballo de Troya 2009 ● Turkey: Dogan 2012 ● USA: Texas Tech University
Press 2010
Stories:
In the Hotel
Capsule (”En el hotel cápsula“)
Buenos
Aires: Mansalva
2017, 104 p.
Cohiba
Israel:
Ilmor (online edition in English/Spanish/Hebrew) ● UK: Granta 2010
Participation in anthologies:
Asado
Verbal
Germany: Wagenbach
2010
(Excerpt of La
furia de la langosta)
Granta Magazine: The Best of
Young Spanish Language Novelists
UK: Granta 2010
(Short Story Cohiba)
Screen-plays:
Wakolda
2013, directed by Lucía
Puenzo
The Fish Child (”El niño pez“)
2009, directed by Lucía
Puenzo
XXY
2007, directed by Lucía Puenzo
A través de tus ojos
2006, directed by Rodrigo Fürth
La puta y la ballena
2003, directed by Luis Puenzo
Historias cotidianas
2000, directed by Andrés Habegger